The Team Coaching Zone Podcast: Coaching | Teams | Leadership

017: Cliff Kayser: Leveraging Polarities to Drive Leadership & Team Coaching

14 snips

Apr 23, 2015

Cliff Kayser, VP at Polarity Partnerships LLC, discusses his background in organization development, Eastern philosophy, and Tai Chi. He explains the benefits of adopting a positive mindset and balancing individual and team focus. Cliff also explores polarity thinking and leveraging virtuous cycles, and provides advice for coaches transitioning into team coaching and the role of polarities.

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Introduction

00:00 • 2min

Introducing Cliff and his Retreat Center in West Virginia

02:16 • 5min

Journey into Coaching and Eastern Philosophy

07:32 • 17min

24:36 • 2min

Balancing Individual and Team Focus

26:26 • 15min

Polarity Thinking and Leveraging Virtuous Cycles

41:31 • 23min

Different Training Programs and Assessments

01:04:38 • 2min

Advice for coaches transitioning into team coaching and the role of polarities

01:06:46 • 3min

Join Dr. Krister Lowe and leading organizational coach Cliff Kayser for this week’s episode of The Team Coaching Zone Podcast. Cliff is a Vice President at Polarity Partnerships, LLC as well as the President and Founder of XPERIENCE, LLC and Kayser Ridge (a retreat center). Cliff holds Masters Degrees in Human Resources Management and Organizational Development, both from American University. He completed his ICF Coaching Certification at The Georgetown Executive Leadership Coaching Program. Cliff has 25 years of experience in organization development consulting, coaching, and leadership training. Prior to joining Polarity Partnerships in 2012 and launching XPERIENCE, LLC in 2007, Cliff was Vice President of Organizational Development and Training for The National Cooperative Bank (NCB) and spent nearly a decade serving The Washington Post newspaper as Senior Organization Development Consultant and The Washington Post Company as Corporate Manager of Human Resources, Training & Web Development. Cliff is a faculty or adjunct faculty member for: The American University’s Master’s in Organization Development and KEY Executive Certificate Program; The Advanced Coaching Certificate program at George Mason Center for the Advancement of Well-being; The Gestalt Institute of Cleveland; The Federal Executive Institute under the Office of Personnel Management; and The 2-year Mastery Program in Polarity Thinking. In this episode of the podcast, Cliff introduces listeners to "polarity thinking" and illustrates how this powerful framework can be used to drive leadership and team coaching. Themes explored in the episode include: an introduction to polarity thinking; polarity maps; solvable problems vs. polarities; the 5-step process to leveraging polarities (Seeing, Mapping, Assessing, Learning, Leveraging); using polarities to go from "Good to Great" and more. Cliff shares examples from his own practice of helping clients leverage polarities to drive leadership, team and organizational development. Leadership and team coaches will find the polarity framework and tools a powerful addition to their coaching toolkit!