The International Coach Federation defines coaching as:
…partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential…Coaches are trained to listen, to observe and to customize their approach to individual client needs. They seek to elicit solutions and strategies from the client; they believe the client is naturally creative and resourceful. The coach’s job is to provide support to enhance the skills, resources, and creativity that the client already has.
Mimi Darmstadter brings this philosophy to her coaching work, with a focus on work purpose and performance. Specifically, her clients aspire to personal and professional achievement, satisfaction, and well being.
They seek answers to some fundamental questions:
- What is my definition of purposeful, meaningful work? How do I cultivate and/or sustain it?
- How do I perform optimally in alignment with my expectations for myself and my employer’s expectations?
- How do I leverage new leadership competency to meet the demands of a volatile, complex, uncertain, and abiguous (VUCA) world?
- How do I demonstrate courage as a leader (bravery in the midst of uncertainly, risk and emotional exposure)?
- What do I want for my life outside of my professional work? How do I hold, balance, integrate, and achieve both my personal and professional goals?
To that end, Mimi’s coaching engagements fall under two primary categories; career transition coaching and executive coaching. Straddling both these categories or as a single focus of coaching, Mimi and her clients often explore their need for personal and professional integration in which she works with them to establish and achieve goals around “balance” and purpose in all their “work.”
Mimi is also the co-founder of Working MAMA, a one-of-a-kind group coaching program for high-achieving working mothers who seek to manage effectively and happily their competing job and parenting commitments.
The success of any coaching engagement depends on:
- client goal-setting and accountability,
- feedback from others to inform the coaching process and outcomes,
- “whole person” understanding to create deeper opportunities for self-awareness and sustained change, and
- completion and discussion of between-session assignments to facilitate ongoing client learning and ultimate achievement of his/her specific goals.
Mimi offers potential clients an initial, no-charge phone consultation in recognition that coach-client chemistry as well as alignment of client needs and coach expertise is essential. Depending on a client’s specific situation, different options are available for the length, meeting frequency, format, and pricing of the coaching engagement.