Exclusive Interview With Stacie Carroll — Executive Leadership Coach

Stacie is an executive leadership coach with 17 years of experience leading in high pressure, male dominated environments. Stacie takes her leadership experience coupled with her education in engineering and applies this expertise to her coaching. She helps leaders and organizations become more successful and competitive through proven leadership development and thriving organizational cultures. Stacie is a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) advocate who helps leaders to start cultural conversations around DEIB and to forge pathways toward an organization’s DEIB goals. Lastly, she is a certified strengths coach helping individuals and teams understand the genius of who they truly are. Her mission: To create leaders and organizations who are self-aware, strong yet empathetic and have positive, productive and inclusive cultures.

Stacie Carroll, Executive Leadership Coach

Introduce yourself! Please tell us about you and your life, so we can get to know you better. I am Stacie Carroll. I am a military reservist, I am a military spouse, a mom to two adorable kids, a dog mom to two fun-loving pups, a business owner and a leadership coach. I find joy in spending time with my family as well as doing any work where I feel I am making a difference. I love fitness. I am addicted to the hybrid training programming at the gym I go to in my town. I also love the outdoors, especially glamping (aka glamour camping). What is your business name and how do you help your clients?

The name of my business is Instinct Coaching, LLC. I came up with this name because we all have instinctual behavioral patterns that show when we are under pressure. The key is to shape these instincts so that they are positive and productive. I have experienced both the positives and negatives of instinctual leadership during my time in the military.

The foundation of my coaching is the highly respected StrengthsFinder assessment because it reveals to the client who they truly are, who they are not, where they are using their natural talents well and where they are not. I can then use this information and the clients’ newfound self-awareness to supercharge the coaching to help them achieve their goals.

What kind of audience do you target your business towards?

My goal is to eventually get into the bigger leadership space because my heart is to someday help drive big organizational change, but right now I find that high achieving women are who are attracted to me, and I absolutely love working with them.

I like to say that I help women get into the same plane as their CEOs so that they can be Goose to the Company’s Maverick without burnout or compromise. This is a fun play on my military experience in my Goose-like job.

Who inspires you to be the best that you can be?

The biblical character Deborah is my inspiration. She lived in a time and culture where women were usually subservient to men, yet she was a prophet and judge over all the people. She was a respected spiritual and military leader, leading the armies of Israel to defeat the much stronger Canaanites who were persecuting her people. She was a woman of faith and leadership. What is your work inspired by?

My vision is to see the U.S. where workplace discrimination and bias is eliminated. To see all genders, ethnicities, and religions provided opportunities to grow and progress in their careers.

I have a personal journey I walked through when I was young, where I felt like I didn’t belong. I felt due to circumstances outside of my control, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t earn the thing I was longing for. I don’t want anyone to ever feel this way and my heart aches for those that do.

I believe my piece of this hugely important vision right now is to help women and the teams they work with. As I am writing this it is National Women’s History Month. I have served alongside women whose stories will be told in history books and love raising up even more of these kinds of women. I also love creating teams around these strong women that are inclusive, high performing and unstoppable. Tell us about a pivotal moment in your life that brought you to where you are today.

A few years ago, I began working in an organization that was even more male-dominated than my previous organization. When I got there, myself and the few other women there realized that we were not being offered the same opportunities as the men. Upon further inquiry the reasoning was rooted in some gender-based assumptions made by the men in positions of power. These assumptions were rooted in care for the women, they were not intended to be malicious. These assumptions were however, based on a false reality and were prohibiting the women from career progression.

As women, we worked together to present a fact-based account of what was happening, along with recommended solutions. The conversation was productive and ultimately led to our male leaders having a new perspective and desire to intentionally include the rock star women in their organization.

This experience showed me that change is possible, to never assume villainy on the part of those showing bias, and that we are better when we can work together instead of pitting ourselves against one another.

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