We are sad to share news of the recent passing of our friend and colleague, Judith E. Glaser, Founder and CEO of Benchmark Communications, Inc. and Chairman of The CreatingWE® Institute. She was widely acknowledged as one of the most pioneering and innovative change agents, consultants and executive coaches in the consulting and coaching industry.
Judith was the world’s leading authority on Conversational Intelligence® (C-IQ). Her transformational approaches use neuroscience and anthropology to enable leaders to raise their Conversational Intelligence and build agile and higher performing individuals and teams. She was the author of 7 best-selling business books, including her most recent best-seller, Conversational Intelligence: How Great Leaders Build Trust and Get Extraordinary Results.
Over the years, Scott and I have been powerfully impacted by Judith’s research and framework for Conversational Intelligence®, which makes complex scientific concepts simple to understand and apply. As described on her website, “Conversational Intelligence is a framework for knowing which kind of conversations trigger the lower, more primitive brain and which conversations activate higher-level intelligences such as trust, integrity, empathy, and good judgment.”
Judith definitely lived into her philosophy. We enjoyed our conversations with her so much that she held the honor of being our most frequent guest on Growth Igniters® Radio over the past three+ years. She was willing to discuss anything that would be helpful to us and our top executive listeners, no matter what was happening in her own life. In fact, she was always so bright and engaged in our conversations that during one of our recording sessions none of us had any idea she would end up unexpectedly having brain surgery later that week! She returned as a guest a few months after she regained strength and (in what would be our last interview with her) shared the remarkable story of her journey as an example of the benefits of appropriately sharing hard times with others.
Click below to download and listen on the go to any or all of our 7 podcast episodes featuring our conversations with Judith.
- Episode 3: Why Conversational Intelligence is a Game Changer in Business,
- Episode 15: The Art And Science Of Accelerating Trust,
- Episode 36: Conversational Habits of Top Leaders,
- Episode 61: The Keys to Building More Powerful Collaboration,
- Episode 122: Bring Together Groups With Opposing Interests – Use Conversational intelligence®,
- Episode 131: What Every CEO Needs to Know in a Tight Labor Market
- Episode 141: How to Open Up To Others During Hard Times
Judith received numerous awards for her cutting edge work with corporate clients as well as her profound impact on the coaching community. In 2017, Marshall Goldsmith selected Judith as one of the top 15 Coaches in the world and as a Brava Award Winner. She was ranked as the 10th Coaching Guru in the world by Global Gurus. In 2016-18 Conversational Intelligence was selected by INC Magazine as one of the top 5 business trends of the year. Since 2006 she has been listed as one of the top 10 consultants globally in Executive Excellence Top 100 Consultants and is recognized as one of the Top 100 Thought Leaders globally on the subject of leadership.
In closing, it seems fitting to share one of Judith’s quotes from her website for Conversational Intelligence:
“To get to the next level of greatness depends on the quality of the culture, which depends on the quality of relationships, which depends on the quality of conversations. Everything happens through conversations.” – Judith E. Glaser
