Judith E. Glaser

This month I had the incredible opportunity to speak in Dubai to an audience of over 450 people for the 9th HR Conference put on by Etisalat Academy, the largest single-source provider of training and development solutions in the Middle East. The attendees included hundreds of forward thinking HR Executives, who wanted to learn more about how HR can take the lead in supporting the C-suite in creating alignment and transformation in their businesses. In addition, in the audience was almost 100 Senior Executives, who were eager to step up and partner with HR. In the front row, there were...

Many of us learn how to talk to each other without graduating to the next level of conversation that enables us to go after and achieve our greatest aspirations with each other. How easy it is to fall into discussions that reinforce what we don't want in our present situation, or focus on what we think is broken? Coming from lack or scarcity and focusing on fixing our problems rather than feeding our passions and what we want to achieve has become such a human habit that we don't even know we're doing it. It's as though that is the...

Years ago and the day before my first visit to the Donna Karan Company to meet Donna and her senior leadership team, I spent a lot of time thinking about and planning what I would wear. At the time I did not own one piece of her line of clothing, although I would have loved to. Instead I would buy designer clothes only when they were on sale, and I did not have a favorite designer.

A month ago my daughter asked if I would be interested in playing Words With Friends with her. Becky lives in MA, and we are in CT and NY and we thought it might be fun. Instead it changed my life! I downloaded the App onto my iPhone, and away we went. Becky and I started playing. We emailed at night when we both had time to take a breadth from the long day, and we emailed in the morning to start the day. I found that I liked playing with Becky more than I realized. Not only did we play,...

Often actions with high emotion become patterns, which become rituals even without intention. Annually, it's good to think about the rituals that you would like to hardwire into your organization, and work on rituals that build community and empathy. Here are some ideas of how to think about rituals. I put this together with Barbara Biziou, one of the founding members of Creating WE Institute, who is a ritual guru. Healthy Rituals Healthy Rituals that build community bring individuals together, awaken the spirit of the team, and they enable individuals to build healthy thriving relationships. In this changing and uncertain...

Mergers and acquisitions can seem too daunting when we view the merging entities as separate cultures, with separate norms, separate ways of doing things. Usually the small company is eaten by the larger and loses its persona. People leave the company in droves and, with that loss, goes much of the wisdom and human energy for creating the new entity. What is left is often a demoralized culture, a group of individuals who are riddled with fear over how the new parents will treat them-friend or foe-and who feel abandoned by those who left for "greener pastures." The new entity needs...

This year has been a very special year of global and cultural awakening. While human beings are separated by geographic boundaries, the reality is we have more in common with our far away neighbors than we often realize. What we have in common is fundamental..... we all have a history, or past, that shapes us. We all have our environment shaping us; and we evolve with an essence of both the power of the past and the power of the present influencing us at the same moment as we engage and connect with others to shape the future. When we...

Conventional wisdom has suggested that it's better not to talk about negative emotions as a way of handling them. So, we turn to alternative strategies such as holding our negative emotions in (as suggested by Anger Management and Emotional Intelligence programs), suppressing them, managing them, or sharing them with others (gossip/triangulation) just to get them out. However, recent discoveries at neuroscience research centers are revealing how to handle negative emotions in new and healthy ways. This updated wisdom takes us down another path. Rather than suppressing or ignoring emotions, which only damages our internal healthy functioning, we need to learn to...

Many of us act as though we all see the same reality, yet the truth is we don't. Human Beings have cognitive biases or blind spots. Blind spots are ways that our mind becomes blocked from seeing reality as it is - blinding us from seeing the real truth about ourselves in relation to others. Once we form a conclusion, we become blind to alternatives, even if they are right in front of their eyes. Emily Pronin, a social psychologist, along with colleagues Daniel Lin and Lee Ross, at Princeton University's Department of Psychology, created the term "blind spots."  The bias...

Israel took me by surprise. My husband and I celebrated my 10th year cancer-free anniversary this year in Israel, and it was an incredible place to be for this profound time in our lives. Israel is the history of the world found in one small spot on the world map. One small piece of geography filled with so much emotion, so much history, and so much push and pull about who owns what and why. Our guide, Nachum, was the best storyteller and facilitator of learning I have ever met. As we drove down a particular street in Tel Aviv, he...