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Kathy Eckles, M.A.Kathy brings a deep background in business, psychology, group facilitation and training to her work with private individuals, organizational leaders and community groups. Formally trained as an executive coach, psychotherapist and mediator she focuses on helping people develop and/or integrate relationship, organizational and facilitation skills. She focuses on listening for people’s central message, their existing gifts and what’s needed to help them move forward. She has built an effective ongoing community dialogue program that uses Essential Partners' approach and knows what it takes to build and sustain community dialogue projects.
Kathy was formerly a top-quartile performing Div. Vice President in the retail industry ($120M budget in 43 stores in New England) and adjunct professor at Lasell College where she taught Organizational Behavior and Ethics in Business. She has a Masters in Counseling Psychology and extensive experience in design and facilitation of private and board retreats, custom-designed workshops, and delivery of year-long training programs where she taught trauma resolution skills and the Enneagram to psychologists, doctors, coaches and therapists in the U.S., UK, Ireland and Sweden. Her work is informed by these values. |
Areas of ExpertisePublications |
Leadership and personal development; group facilitation; training program development and delivery including organizational development, group facilitation, communication, emotional intelligence, energy psychology. Retail management, strategic planning, financial forecasting, inventory management, negotiating, succession planning.
Best Book of the Year Award finalist (top ten travel essays) for my first book, Yes! to the Journey of a Lifetime. Co-author of three training manuals: 1) The educational field-guide to the multiple-award winning book, The Leadership Integrity Challenge: How to Assess and Facilitate Emotional Maturity by Edward Morler, MBA., Ph.D. 2) a training manual for the advanced study of psycho-spiritual healing frameworks and group facilitation with Andrew Hahn, Psy.D., and 3) a facilitator’s manual for Gloucester Conversations, a grassroots community group working to improve civil discourse.
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Education |
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My Personal Story |
Since childhood I've had a keen awareness of the unseen world that was always coupled with an appreciation for well-developed, diversified life skills. As a kid I watched people in my rural neighborhood west of Cleveland go to and from work in what seemed rote behavior with minimal joy. It was merely my perception, not necessarily an accurate one, but it didn't look like an appealing way to live so I pondered what would make my life worth living. My answer was to discover how the seen and unseen interact in Life's creative process. Big words for a little girl. I had no idea how this would happen. I simply paid attention to learning practical skills, to the impact of my thoughts, feelings and actions, to my intuition, and to developing a healthy relationship with myself and something part of and bigger than me that I call Life/Love itself. I cared more about the quality of my inner and outer life than about being a particular 'something'. I asked Life to help me learn professions that would help facilitate a good life in every place and context.
Fresh from college I started in a retail executive training program, remaining in retail for 24 years, most recently as a top-quartile Div. Vice President in merchandising responsible for the end-to-end operations of multiple women's sportswear divisions. I led a professional buying staff merchandising 43 stores in New England with a budget of $120 million. It's here in operating a top-performing retail business that I became most interested in what helps people excel and learn from one another. Intuition and curiosity prompted me back to graduate school in psychology, to internships in pastoral counseling, executive coaching, and group facilitation, and ultimately to trade my lucrative six figure job for the chance to learn something that even then seemed essential. Having studied energy healing since my late twenties and psychology since my forties, I now bring a lifetime of business, psychology and energy to my work with individuals and organizations. I learn something more every day. I now live in Gloucester, MA, the oldest seaport in America. It's a rugged, grace-filled place that's definitely home. And the journey continues . . . |
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“For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks,
the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation . . . So we must not forget, when we love, that we are beginners, bunglers of life, apprentices in love and must learn love; and like all learning, this needs peace, patience and composure.” Ranier Maria Rilke - Author of Letters to a Young Poet |