Testimonies

“As an international level trampolinist, learning new skills is something you’re always doing. However there was one trick I had been trying to learn for five years but I couldn’t do it no matter how hard I tried.

I would start crying before I even got on the trampoline.

With Dobbo’s (Mark’s) help I was able to get back on the trampoline confident and with a smile on my face.

Two weeks later I could do the trick.”
Christie Jenkins
Bronze medal -Jnr. Olympics.

“Mark Dobson has a unique ability to connect with all around him. He draws on his years of experience and understanding of the functional learning styles and patterns of people so as to create personal solutions that empower them be champions in their own lives.”

Jol Finck
Gold License Swimming Coach

"‘Having spent three decades in teaching with many incursions and excursions on the self-help/tap-into-your-potential lines, it needs to be good to impress me… however today I was truly impressed by your material and presentation"

Ruth Hilton
Flinders College , Tyabb

“In 2001, I and two Bard College colleagues were charged with creating New York City ’s first “early college” in a cooperative arrangement between the Chancellor of New York City’s (then) Board of Education and my employer, the President of Bard College. Our program recruited a racially and economically diverse group of students from all five boroughs of the city, and undertook to complete New York State’s Regents’ requirements in two years (rather than the conventional four), so that we could then offer university-level courses in the remaining two years.

After a summer of interviewing dozens of competent but unimaginative candidates, I was in despair and asked Mark Dobson (whom I knew as Dobbo) if he’d come and help, even though I knew that he could only spend six weeks with us. That turned out to be one of the best choices I made, in a season filled with start-up troubles that were compounded by the attack on the World Trade Center , which we saw from Bard High School Early College’s fourth floor vantage. Our first task on the third day of our program’s existence was to be threatened with a tsunami of tragedy, fear, and insecurity, both for our 260 students, but teachers and staff as well.

Mark’s leadership during that week was sterling: calm and collected in days when those qualities were in short supply, he helped assuage the anxiety of children (and staff) who’d just come off subways clogged with heavily armed police and soldiers. When teachers were late for work because of delays caused by checkpoints, Mark filled in, and while he couldn’t conduct classes on their behalf, he lost no time in getting students to think about the kind of community we should have at our new school. Over the next several weeks, Mark & I worked at conveying to our students that we wanted them to articulate norms for BHSEC, and were able to solicit from them in many small discussion groups that we all in fact wanted to have a school without physical or verbal violence, bullying, name-calling, etc. We adopted the notion that we, the community, would uphold these values, rather than expect enforcement by teachers.

One notable quality Mark possesses does not exist in abundance in the teaching profession: where most know what they would like to teach and with varying levels of success, find a way to explain that, Mark intuits concerns or interests his students possess, and uses that to connect with what’s on his mind. Rather than demanding a blank slate (obedience), he honors them as individuals possessed of ideas and capable of thoughtful action, meets them, and guides them. His connection with young people is uncanny.

The highest praise I can give Mark is that while he does not at present possess the credential to be admitted, say, to America’s premier school for teachers, the Harvard Graduate School of Education, I’d say that he’s more effective as a teacher than their graduates with whom I have worked. “

U Ba Win
Vice-President for Early College
Policy and Programs
Bard College
<bard.edu>

Testimonies

“You have injected an amazing amount of energy into our organisation and for me personally you have been a real inspiration. All members of our team now have better goals and best of all – their belief in themselves and their futures is higher than ever. Thanks a million.

Paul Burgess
CEO Link Up International

“The day after you did the visualisation with me I took 2 seconds of my PB. I later went to Qld for the Australian Championships where I broke a world record in my classification.

Without you helping me and the book you gave me I could never have done that.”

Kobie Scott
Para Olympian

“In my profession forgetting is no laughing matter. Dobbo not only helped me break Australian memory records, he gave me the tools and strategies to maintain peak performance”

Tansel Ali
Australian Memory Champion
2003, 2004, 2006
Memory Record Holder
Grandmaster of Memory

"When I told my boss I was using a young guy out of Melbourne to speak to very successful business owners of one of her clients she freaked out. The objections were endless: he’s too young, what does youth work have to do with recruitment, training and retention, have you seen him present, blah, blah, blah. ‘JUST TRUST ME!’ I told her.

Several conferences later I have complete faith in my decision to work with Mark wherever possible. His presentations are fresh and exciting and they break down old barriers created by stuffy business plans that follow traditional ideas on how to get the best out of your staff.

Mark's work with youth has created a blueprint for gaining the best out of people at any level. Mark's best strategy, allowing people to create their own rules at work, is a winning formula for any business and should be shouted out at CEO level everywhere. Testimony to his ability is now, when I recommend a speaker line up with someone else in it, my very fussy boss says ‘Why aren’t we using Mark?’"

Helen Dirou
Conference Development Manager
Incremental Systems Aust.