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About Cliff Kayser

Cliff is an experienced organization development (OD) consultant, executive coach, and leadership trainer overseeing Polarity Partnerships' east coast operations out of Washington, DC. In 2017, Cliff became a founding partner of the 501(c)3 organization the Institute for Polarities of Democracy and in 2018 the healthcare coaching/consulting firm, SixSEED Partners. Cliff is a faculty member at American University's Master's in OD and KEY Executive programs and is a Coaching Fellow for George Mason's Accredited Coach Training Program under the Center for the Advancement of Well-being. His past work experience includes VP of Organizational Development and Training for The National Cooperative Bank, Senior OD Consultant for The Washington Post, and Corporate Manager of Human Resources (HR) and Training for The Washington Post Company. Cliff earned Master's Degrees in OD (2007) and HR Management (1998) from The American University and his Coaching Certification from Georgetown's Executive Leadership Coaching Program in (2008). He is a PCC (Professional Certified Coach) and a graduate of the 2-year Polarity Mastery program (2010), and has served as the program dean since 2014.

Who Won the “Focus on Strengths VS Weaknesses” Debate?

By |2020-03-12T13:11:12-05:00March 12th, 2020|Polarity Thinking|

"Polarities," according to Dr. Joel M. Rothaizer, MCC in a May 21, 2019 Forbes article. He goes on to say…. "As Bob Kaplan and Rob Kaiser described in a Harvard Business Review article, strengths overused become weaknesses, and virtues become vices. Most leaders are aware of their areas of weaknesses but are often blind to the downsides of overusing [...]

Support for Our New Normal – Leveraging Virtual Team Polarities

By |2020-03-12T12:03:22-05:00March 12th, 2020|Polarity Thinking|

If you need a fresh perspective on Virtual Team effectiveness now that we’re all going to be doing even more of it – this research may help that Polarity Partnerships, LLC did in collaboration with: Jean Brittain Leslie, Emily Hoole, and Rebecca Anderson, Center for Creative Leadership Margaret Luciano, Ph.D., Arizona State University John Mathieu, [...]

Thanks to Your Donations – A LIVE EVENT!

By |2020-03-12T12:03:50-05:00March 11th, 2020|Both/And Polarity Leveraging, Institute for Polarities of Democracy, Polarity Thinking, Polarity Thinking and Problem-solving Thinking|

A special invitation just went out to key political and policy influencers from government, non-profit, academia, and think-tanks for a May 13th workshop entitled:  From Polarized to Optimized.  We only had space for 30 people -- so if you didn't get an invitation and are experiencing FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), Fear not!  We’re exploring ways to [...]

The Corona and Oralonea Viruses

By |2020-03-12T10:14:07-05:00March 9th, 2020|Polarity Thinking|

by Cliff Kayser, President and Founder I got sidetracked from this post a month ago when one of our cats had to have emergency surgery to remove a hairball ($6k). I was thinking then about the budding topic of the day, which seems now to be the topic of our time -- the Coronavirus.  What [...]

Organizing Wisdom and Reclaiming the Power of Our Stories

By |2020-03-06T16:37:33-05:00March 6th, 2020|Polarity Thinking|

(This article was written in collaboration with my good friends and colleagues, Bert Parlee, PhD and Ann Deaton, PhD) The significant events that impacted your perspective become the stories from which you learn and teach as an authentic leader. (Tichy, 2002) Our organizations, our teams, and our lives are made up of experiences, perspectives, relationships, and [...]

Make and Keep Us All Great: The Polarities of Democracy

By |2020-03-03T17:03:31-05:00March 2nd, 2020|Continuity and Transformation, Freedom and Authority, Freedom AND Equality, Individual Justice and Collective Justice, Institute for Polarities of Democracy, Polarity Thinking|

(Portions of the text below is taken from an article by William Benet, PhD, Suzanne Rackl, MM, CFRE, CFRM and Cliff Kayser, MSHR, MSOD, PCC) In 2017, the Institute for Polarities of Democracy was established as a Washington, DC-based nonprofit organization to promote and advance the Polarity Thinking theory of Dr. Barry Johnson and the Polarities of Democracy [...]

Judith Glaser’s Three Polarity Multarity of Conversational Intelligence™

By |2020-03-11T09:12:00-05:00February 27th, 2020|Polarity Thinking|

On November 18, 2018 Judith Glaser died from pancreatic cancer. She was a lifetime student of human behavior, organizational anthropologist, corporate consultant, executive coach, and best-selling business author. I thought of her and her great work recently when, while intending to hold a family member accountable for a social media post I believed was offensive, [...]

Seven Polarities: Harvard Business Review

By |2020-03-11T09:12:30-05:00February 27th, 2020|Polarity Thinking|

A February 20, 2020 Harvard Business Review article by Jennifer Jordan, Michael Wade, and Elizabeth Teracino contrast traditional leadership model with a new-emerging one. One of the key points is: “…to be successful in the current environment, executives need to be good at both styles. If a leader relies solely on positional authority he/she will run [...]

Scaling Leadership: Building Organizational Capability and Capacity to Create Outcomes that Matter Most

By |2020-03-03T11:11:31-05:00February 25th, 2020|Polarity Thinking, Scaling Leadership|

Scaling Leadership: Building Organizational Capability and Capacity to Create Outcomes that Matter Most Robert J. Anderson and William A. Adams Wiley, 2019   Key Themes “Conscious” -- Introduction pg. xx (Discussion of scale) “…the only way for this to happen is for conscious leaders to scale conscious leadership.” Pg. 3 -- “At a certain point, [...]

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