To convert a Lawson date in GL_DATE to string:
Here's some convert function formats

CONVERT(CHAR, GL_DATE, 110) mm-dd-yyyy
CONVERT(CHAR, GL_DATE, 112) yyyyddyy
CONVERT(CHAR, GL_DATE, 101) mm/dd/yyyy

I'm assuming Oracle SQL due to the fact that your default date format looks like what Oracle uses.

If so, to control the formatting of a date you would convert it to a character string using the to_char function.

To convert to the specific format you provided: to_char(date_field,'MM-DD-YYYY')

So to include this in a SQL statement:

SELECT 

   TO_CHAR(empl.term_date,'MM-DD-YYYY') as "Term Date" 

 FROM prod.employee empl

You can learn more concerning the possible date formats from here: https://docs.oracle.com/cd/B28359_01/server.111/b28286/sql_elements004.htm

One quirk of Lawson to be aware of is that it doesn't use NULL values in SQL for dates. Instead any empty dates are represented by the date 01/01/1700. So you might want to roll this into a CASE statement to cover that possibility: 

SELECT 

  CASE 

 WHEN empl.term_date = TO_DATE('01/01/1700','MM/DD/YYYY') 

   THEN '' 

 ELSE 

    TO_CHAR(empl.term_date,'MM-DD-YYYY') 

 END as "Term Date" 

 FROM prod.employee empl

Exactly what I needed, thank you all for your time and quick response!