The Lavin Agency Speakers Bureau
A speakers bureau that represents the best original thinkers,
writers, and doers for speaking engagements.
A speakers bureau that represents the best original thinkers,
writers, and doers for speaking engagements.
Virtual environments aren’t the end of human connection—as long as we communicate effectively.
How we talk to people is so fundamental, we often forget it’s a skill. But it’s essential for leaders, teams, and everyday people—especially in this new era of remote and hybrid work environments, driven by virtual communication. As a professional facilitator of meetings and conferences, MISHA GLOUBERMAN is a skilled communicator and an expert in maximizing human connection. He’s been called a brilliant moderator, a natural teacher, and a gifted negotiator—even running a negotiations course that’s been described as “life-changing.” In his intelligent, funny talks, Glouberman shows us how we can communicate more effectively with each other—even when emotions are fraught, stakes are high, or when we’re separated by physical distance.
“Glouberman will win you over with a simple and good-spirited reasonableness that leaves you feeling uplifted by the power a voice of common sense can still have in the world.”— Jonathan Goldstein, This American Life contributing editor
Misha Glouberman is passionate about how people connect with each other—at work, at conferences, in cities, anywhere they meet. As a speaker, facilitator, and designer of participatory events, Glouberman helps groups of people have vital conversations with each other. His classes are a mix of relatable anecdotes, practical lessons, and hands-on, experiential learning that has earned him praise from participants and media alike. Engaging, effective, and surprisingly fun, Glouberman’s work has been described as “humanizing relationships—one event at a time,” (One+) and “reinventing the way stakeholders collaborate with decision-makers” (The Harvard Business Review).
Glouberman’s expertise in negotiations, communications, and putting together participatory events, also make him a highly skilled host and moderator for the virtual age. Beyond the content of his message, which is itself invaluable, Glouberman focuses on encouraging and fortifying audience-to-audience engagement using digital tools and platforms. It’s precisely this hands-on quality that makes every event he leads feel not only fascinating, but completely absorbing. That, and his presence, which is nothing short of transformative. Glouberman has been likened by The Globe and Mail as a mix of “Peter Mansbridge’s smarts and Conan O’Brien’s wit”—a man who can “turn a Q&A session into a surprisingly sincere collaboration.” In everything he does, Glouberman combines a creative people-centered approach (he has a philosophy degree from Harvard) with analytic rigour (he previously worked as a software developer).
Glouberman is also the co-founder and host of the wildly popular Trampoline Hall, a lecture series that has sold out every show in its home city of Toronto since its inception, as well as toured North America. His book The Chairs Are Where the People Go, co-authored with Sheila Heti, is a collection of inventive, philosophical, often humorous essays that was promptly named one of the best non-fiction books of the year by The New Yorker.
Misha was fabulous! The lecture theatre was packed and people really, really loved the presentation. We got an awful lot of positive feedback and Misha made the event a great success. The next day’s seminar was much smaller, but again productive and informative. There were a couple of people from Maxwell who organize a conference in the Middle East in conjunction with the State Department, and they found his ways of engaging the problem of bringing together in a conference setting people who don't know one another very informative.
Syracuse UniversityAssociate Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy at Wharton 2024 "Top 40 Under 40" Business Professor Author, Femonomics (Forthcoming)
Performance psychologist Head of the MLB Players Association Mental Health Division Former Director of Mental Conditioning for the New York Giants Author of Life as Sport
Author of Rage Becomes Her and The Resilience Myth Award-Winning Journalist Co-Founder and Director of the Women’s Media Center Speech Project
Associate Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy at Wharton 2024 "Top 40 Under 40" Business Professor Author, Femonomics (Forthcoming)
Performance psychologist Head of the MLB Players Association Mental Health Division Former Director of Mental Conditioning for the New York Giants Author of Life as Sport
Author of Rage Becomes Her and The Resilience Myth Award-Winning Journalist Co-Founder and Director of the Women’s Media Center Speech Project
Director of The Muslims Are Coming! Author of How to Make White People Laugh
Host of The Rick Mercer Report for 15 years Bestselling Author of Talking to Canadians and Rick Mercer Final Report Winner of the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour
CEO of Mansueto Ventures Former Editor-in-Chief of Fast Company
Author of Grit, the #1 New York Times Bestseller | Pioneering Researcher on Grit, Perseverance, and the Science of Success
Pulitzer Prize-Winning Creator of The 1619 Project | Executive Producer of the Emmy Award-Winning 1619 Project Hulu Docuseries | MacArthur Genius
Nike's Former Chief Marketing Officer | Author of Emotion by Design
CEO of The Atlantic | Former Editor-in-Chief of WIRED
Bestselling author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism | Harvard Business School Professor Emerita | Activist and scholar
Negotiation is all about reaching decisions with people who want something different than you, which is to say: pretty much everyone. It’s more than a skill, negotiation is about developing a new perspective on relationships with other people. We can all learn how to become better at forging agreements, creating mutual gain, and resolving conflicts, in all areas of our lives. But how?
Misha Glouberman will help you transform the way you view negotiation, and the reasons people disagree in the first place. His talk will help you get past the roadblocks that prevent agreement, and recognize the traps and misunderstandings that people fall into, especially when emotions run high. By understanding someone else’s perspective, yours will grow. Glouberman draws on research from many sources, including Harvard’s Program on Negotiation, and uses storytelling and humour to illustrate how to talk to people when it seems like you are speaking in two different languages. These are life-changing skills that can transform how you see the world and the people around you.
A lot of energy, effort, and expense goes into planning and attending a conference. Conferences can be a great opportunity to learn, to meet new people, to have interesting and valuable conversations. Yet, they seldom live up to this promise. In this participatory event, Misha Glouberman sets about to change this. Because people come to events knowing very few people, or knowing only the people in their small world or silo, Glouberman initiates a series of conversations where every participant meets a dozen new people. These groups then talk in ways that are genuine and human in a non-intimidating context. (Shy attendees, especially, love this exercise!) People get to share ideas about the event, its themes, and what they are hoping to get out of it. By the end, literally thousands of new connections can be formed within a group, dramatically changing the social dynamic and network map of the event. Conference goers leave Glouberman’s unique session feeling energized, connected, and focused.
Misha Glouberman looks at multiple issues about living in cities: etiquette on public transit, dealing with noisy neighbors, bikes and cars, gentrification, and many other topics. With candor, counterintuitive provocations, and a lucid reasonableness, Glouberman challenges many of the clichés about living in cities, while explaining that the most important way to understand a city is as a place full of people who coexist, while wanting different things from each other.