Nicky Lowe [00:00:06]:
Hi, it’s Nicky Lowe and welcome to the Wisdom for Working Mums podcast show. I’m your host and for nearly two decades now I’ve been an executive coach and leadership development consultant. And on this show I share evidence based insights from my coaching, leadership and psychological expertise and inspiring interviews that help women like you to combine your work, life and motherhood in a more successful and sustainable way. Join me and my special guests as we delve into leadership and lifestyle topics for women, empowering you to thrive one conversation at a time. I’m so happy that you’re here and let’s get on with today’s episode. I’ve been looking forward to today’s conversation for a while because my guest is just incredible. Today I’m speaking with Dr. Kate Hayes and Kate is head of Women’s Performance Psychology at the Football Association.

Nicky Lowe [00:01:02]:
So the FA working closely with Serena Wiegman and the Lionesses so the European champions in 2022, World cup finalists in 2023 and back to back Euro winners in 2025. And before joining the FA she led the National Psychology Support at the UK Sports Institute. Through Rio and Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic cycles, she supported ACT fleets across diving including Tom Daly, professional rugby with the Harlequins and the history making Cambridge Women’s Rowing program. Ensure when the stakes are high, Kate is the calm in the storm and the catalyst for sustained success. And as a working mum, she’ll also share how she’s navigated that dynamic herself. In this conversation she shares the elite performance strategies that create sustainable success, practical tools you can use at work and home, and Kate’s book is my absolute favorite from 2025 and I genuinely think it’s in my top five that I’ve ever read. I have found myself recommending it to like all of my clients this year because it is jam packed with such wisdom and expertise. She pulls back the curtains on actually what she does with elite athletes that leads to this success and it has so much application for us as professionals.

Nicky Lowe [00:02:32]:
So I can’t wait to share this conversation with you. I hope you love Kate as much as I do because she’s just one of these women that I think more people need to know, listen to and learn from. So I won’t keep you any longer. Let’s introduce Kate. Welcome Kate. It’s a real pleasure to have you on the podcast.

Kate Hays [00:02:52]:
Thank you so much for having me. I’ve been really looking forward to this.

Nicky Lowe [00:02:55]:
Me too because we had a conversation a while ago and I’ve been really, really looking forward to this and before we hit record we had a conversation because I had to reschedule this unfortunately. I was so gutted. So I am so glad that we are now having this conversation because as you know, your book is be my favorite book of this year. I’ve been recommending it to everybody I speak to and all of my clients. So I can’t wait for us to dive into this conversation because I think there’s going to be so much in here for people.

Kate Hays [00:03:25]:
Oh, thank you so much. It was as, as you know, it was a bit of a passion project for me. So it’s really, really nice to hear that feedback. So thank you.

Nicky Lowe [00:03:32]:
So for those don’t know who you are yet, can you explain what your kind of, what your role is and a bit of your background?

Kate Hayes [00:03:40]:
Yeah, of course. So My name is Dr. Kate Hayes. I am a sports psychologist. So I’ve been working as a sports psychologist for the best part of all, almost 25 years. Which seems, which makes, always makes me feel so, so old. And I am starting to feel old now, I’ll be very, very honest. But yeah, I’ve been doing the job for quite a long time.

Kate Hayes [00:04:01]:
I started out in the world of British diving, so I worked in high board diving for many, many years. And in between I’ve worked in professional rugby, professional football, a whole range of different Olympic sports. Led the psychology team at the UKSI which is the main organization in our country, sports science support to athletes and teams. And I’ve worked in the corporate sector as well. But essentially I’ve been working as a sports psychologist for a pretty long time now.

Nicky Lowe [00:04:33]:
And I remember speaking to you and kind of going, every team or sports person you’ve worked with has kind of just done phenomenally well. And you’re like, that’s just luck. And I’m like, no it’s not. There is a common denominator here and that’s what I can’t wait to dive into because for my audience, a lot of them are in corporate roles, part of or leading teams and we all want to work in a high performing team. But it kind of seems like this secret sauce. It’s like, well, what is it and how do you define it and how do you create it? And that’s what I love about your book because you literally give us the building blocks of here’s what I do with the teams that I work with. And clearly your most recent success has been with the kind of lionesses, hasn’t it?

Kate Hayes [00:05:19]:
Yeah, I joined the FA back in 2022 so I was actually, I’d been speaking to Kay Cottington, who’s a director, who was the director of the women’s programme at the time. She’d reached out to me during that year and I’d had several conversations. And the more I spoke to her about the women’s program and their aspirations and what they were looking to do, just the more excited I got about that whole prospect. And I’ve been incredibly lucky to be able to work at the FA for this preceding four as part of the head coach Serena Wiegman’s team. It’s a phenomenal group of players and of staff and we’ve had an incredibly enjoyable ride over this last period, it’s fair to say.

Nicky Lowe [00:06:05]:
So am I right in saying that your role is head of Psychology for the Female Football Association? Have I got that right?

Kate Hayes [00:06:14]:
Yeah, I’m the head of Women’s Psychology at the fa, so that’s my full time role currently. And I began that role off the back of a relatively similar role at the uksi. So I led the psychology team, which is a team that look after all the Olympic and Paralympic sports. And I ran that team in the lead into the Rio and then the Tokyo Olympic Games.

Nicky Lowe [00:06:37]:
Brilliant. So we know we’ve got somebody with such amazing caliber on here and that’s why I’m so excited, because I think your experience and expertise is just, you know, that’s why I love your book. It’s like, oh my gosh, you’re taking us behind the scenes on what like elite sports people do. So in terms of performance psychology, what does that practically mean? What might your typical week or month look like working perhaps with the lionesses or people?

Kate Hayes [00:07:07]:
It varies so much and there’s different levels to work in as a psychologist in sport. So I always think about it in terms of layers of a system. So you can either be working in a kind of reactive way on the front line during competition and providing support in the moment, and that’s kind of probably the top of the pyramid. You could be working in a one to one structure where you’re helping individual athletes develop their mental skills for performance. You could be working with technical tactical coaches where you’re basically trying to instill psychological characteristics through technical tactical training. You could be working on relationship dynamics, whether that’s player to player, play to staff, staff to staff, or you could be working systemically, which essentially is helping to facilitate an environment that’s conducive to positive mental health as well as world class sport performance. And if I’m really honest. I think sports psychologists have talked about systemic, working systemically.

Kate Hayes [00:08:07]:
They’ve talked a good game for, for a period of time. And that was one of the things that I was really interested in when I took over the psychology team at the IS or the UK Sport Institute. Is. But what is that? Does that actually mean? So there’s so many people that talk about working organizationally, working systemically, but what does that actually look like? And it was part of the reason for the book and it was a big part of the project that I’d ran at the UKSI is about, well, how do we define that? What is absolutely non negotiable? If we’re trying to create teams, as you said at the start, that can perform onto the highest level, but also in a way where their mental health is protected, what does that actually look like and what’s absolutely non negotiable in order to achieve that success? And that’s what I think has been my direction of travel over the last few years. As I mentioned, I started out life as a sports psychologist working for British diving. So that was quite often small groups of athletes that had a personal coach and you would work very closely with those individuals and their coaches around, helping them develop the mindset and the skills to be able to perform, perform under pressure, where when you strip everything away, essentially that’s what sports psychology is about. It’s about enabling people to execute their best performance, whatever performance looks like for them, under the greatest pressure. And essentially what do we mean by pressure? It’s the importance of performing well in challenging circumstances.

Kate Hayes [00:09:33]:
So it’s the difference between talking through your ideas of a pitch or a presentation and then taking that into a boardroom and pitching that idea to somebody that’s going to say yes or no and either finance that or not. And the implications of that. So it’s about being able to perform with consequences. So I spent a lot of time working diving, working with individuals, and then it was only when I started to then work in team sport that I obviously had the question of, okay, well, how, how does this look? Because the first team sport that I worked with after working in diving for a long time was working in professional men’s rugby. And suddenly you’ve got 50 individuals that make up that team that are all performers in their own right, and how do you influence the performance of the team? You’re probably not going to get the biggest bang for your buck by working on an individual level. So then the question came for me. Well, how do you upscale good performance psychology with individuals into a team environment. And then later in my career is, how do you upskill that into an organization and into creating systemic changes? And that’s really where the book came from.

Kate Hayes [00:10:39]:
I feel like I spent the last 25 years trying to figure that out because there wasn’t anywhere to go. I was walking into a team environment and I was asking questions, but I didn’t have the answers to them yet. I didn’t know what that could look like. And that was why it was really important to me to write the book. And I wanted to write a psychology book that didn’t feel like a textbook. I wanted to write a book that felt like a storybook, that somebody could pick it up and find something in there that they could immediately apply to their world and to their context. And. And I hope that that that’s what it’s done.

Kate Hayes [00:11:12]:
But that’s definitely where the idea came, is there’s so many unbelievably talented people doing spectacular things in all walks of life, and so often you don’t get the opportunity to learn from it. And I’ve had so many unbelievable opportunities. I’ve worked with some phenomenal coaches and phenomenal athletes and some brilliant people, and I’ve benefited so much from those interactions and that learning. And. And I just wanted to share that. I wanted to try to distill that work into something that would make sense to anybody that picked it up.

Nicky Lowe [00:11:44]:
And I genuinely think you’ve done that, Kate. Literally, I cannot tell you how many people I’ve shared your book with or given them little nuggets. So for those listening, you talk about working in kind of diving. The Forward is written by Tom Daly. So for anybody in the uk, you know, he is a household name. He’s just been on Traitors, hasn’t he? So he’s like a TV star now, as well as, like an elite sports person. And the little nuggets that both you and Tom share are just so powerful because it’s brilliant storytelling, but you can kind of connect to it even if you’ve not got that sports background. You talked about the rugby.

Nicky Lowe [00:12:21]:
Was it the Harlequins that you worked with?

Kate Hayes [00:12:24]:
Yeah, it was, yeah. Harlequins, which is a professional rugby team in London, which, again, is a.

Nicky Lowe [00:12:28]:
You know, they’re world renowned. And there was a piece in the book where you go around speaking to each of the players, going, are you clear on strategy? And, of course, the strategy had been drummed into them. But what you realize was actually, they don’t understand when they’re on the pitch in that moment, what the strategy is. And just that picture of the, you’ve got a picture of the, the pitch and how it’s divided into four zones. Powerful.

Kate Hayes [00:12:54]:
That’s the example actually from the work with the, the red roses, the women’s. The women’s. That specific example is from the, from the women’s England team. And that’s an example of aligning strategy with behaviors. So there was a. In my mind, when you strip it all away, psychology is pretty straightforward in team sport. It’s about the ability, it’s absolute clarity in the game plan and then the confidence to execute that under the greatest pressure. And actually that’s the same in all walk of lives, whether that’s in business or teaching or dentistry or anything else.

Kate Hayes [00:13:29]:
It’s do you have absolute clarity in the roles and responsibilities that you need to execute? And then the confidence to be able to do that regardless of the stakes. And what we founded with that, with that team at that time was that there were some, some of the more senior players within the squad had absolute clarity over the strategy and the method of play and were able to distill that in a way that made sense, but that wasn’t necessarily completely shared across the group. And so myself and the head coach at the time, we kind of just went back, went out to establish what’s our current reality, what is the understanding. And Simon Middleton, who was a coach at the time, he did an unbelievable piece of work then which was to convey that information in a way in which that made sense to everybody. And I think that’s a real skill and a real talent. Sometimes you can take very complex things, but the skill comes from being able to break that complexity down in a way that makes sense for everybody that needs to process, digest and act on that experience. And he was able to do that really well. And for the rugby fans out there, there may not be many, but there may be some.

Kate Hayes [00:14:38]:
The game plan was about a position versus possession based game. So when you stripped it right back, it was breaking the pitch into zones. The red zone, the amber zone, the green zone and the gold zone. And essentially you want to spend as much time in the gold zone as possible because that’s at the point where you score tries and score points and as least amount of time in opposition territory in the red zone as possible. So the strategy became how do you get out of the red zone, move through and then really go for the jugular and have impact when you’re in the gold zone. And so having a visual around that and then being able to associate our performance behaviors to that and do a piece of work around what’s important for us as a team. What does this look like on the pitch, but equally what does it look like off the pitch? I think that aligning kind of the dynamics of performance with the dynamics of team is really, really quite important.

Nicky Lowe [00:15:27]:
And I think that’s so powerful because as leaders we can have this great strategy, but if we can’t translate it, as you say, to the people point of performance, it loses its impact. And there’s loads of nuggets in the book. But let’s go back to the book then. So you were saying, you know, Simon Middleton’s strength was taking kind of complex things and simplifying them. And I think that’s absolutely what you’ve done in this book. So you’ve built it on these. Is it four building blocks?

Kate Hayes [00:15:51]:
Yeah, that’s right.

Nicky Lowe [00:15:52]:
Can you talk us through that?

Kate Hayes [00:15:53]:
Yeah, I can. There was lots of different pieces of work that underpinned that. It was the experience of moving from individual into team sport and then into team, and then from working in team sport into supporting senior management teams, leadership teams, and then that oversight role of other psychologists working across the system. And what I really wanted to get to was a framework so that, that would have helped the me that walked into that professional environment all those years ago that didn’t have that working framework to, to. To kind of plan my work against. So that essentially the. The book breaks down the building blocks of success. The things that I believe are absolutely non negotiable in order to create environments that enable their people to achieve the highest possible levels of performance, but also in a way that’s sustainable.

Kate Hayes [00:16:45]:
So very simply it’s interrogating four pretty basic questions which is around who are we? It’s essentially about interrogating the answers to four questions which essentially are who are we? Why are we here? How do we play? And how do we win? And very simply, that’s about people, purpose, method and environment. So the fundamental thinking behind that is that I think quite often organizations don’t necessarily spend enough time on a people level. So we have strategy and we have methods of working and we have processes and we have things that we need to achieve. But we maybe spend a bit less time really understanding the people within our ranks and how they operate and how they work together. Together. So the who part, the first building block is all about who is in the room. Like what are the absolute super strengths of our people? What are their areas of development, how do they show up under pressure? What predictions can we make about their behavior based upon their values and what we know about them? How can we utilize their strengths as a multiplier effect in the team? So it’s really, it sounds simple, who are we? But essentially it’s about really interrogating the individuals and, and their unique strengths and how that can best support the team. And then the why we here is all about purpose.

Kate Hayes [00:18:03]:
We know individuals enjoy elevated experiences of well being if they’re connected to something that’s higher than themselves. So that’s all about ensuring that every single person within the team, within the organization is aligned to that higher purpose. Everybody knows the, the thing that they’re really going after, the North Star, the driver and in some way shape or form their day to day is connected to that purpose. So that’s the second piece. The how we play is about method. It’s a modus operanda is about what, how do we go about what we do here, what is our process, what are our structures, how do we plan, do review, how do we set up our system in a way in which we are enhancing our opportunities of success. And then the final piece, how we Win is about do we have the tools and environment to optimize the opportunity of success? Success. Are we creating an environment here for our people that gives them the best opportunity to thrive? And that could look like mental skills training, but it can also look like creating an environment that, that is psychologically safe, that does dose challenge and support, that does stretch people, but does that in a, in a way in which is conducive to sustainability? And the ethos behind all of those things, Nikki, is that people can do spectacular things when they’re not in a good place.

Kate Hayes [00:19:20]:
We know that people can be successfully, can be successful when they are struggling, when they are struggling with their mental health or a variety of different reasons. But the question is, is how sustainable is that? And working at the very edge of your coping resources for a prolonged period of time has a cost. So this approach is all about layering up, is building on those building blocks. It’s creating environments that yes, really do push people and are challenging and do give people the opportunity to achieve the top levels of human endeavor, but in a way that that’s sustainable, that the cost isn’t too great and that they will be able to be successful over a period of time.

Nicky Lowe [00:20:00]:
And that is like for me, that’s what makes this book even more powerful. Not only is it that like this brilliant playbook that anybody that can read can take away practical things. I cannot tell you how many clients I’ve sat in coaching sessions with where we’re talking about their teams and I’m like, there’s only so much we can cover in these coaching sessions. You need to read Kate’s book. And then we’ll, we’ll pull out the bits that like, we can work on in the coaching session. Because it literally is a playbook of like, here’s the personality profiling that I use, here’s the conversations that I use, here’s some of the methodology. Like, there’s so many practical bits in it and it’s wrapped around this humanness of like, there’s no point us having unbelievable performance if you’re not thriving alongside it. And I think we’ve seen that with the lionesses.

Nicky Lowe [00:20:45]:
Not only as there’s been like back to back success, but everybody that you see interviewed, there’s just so much joy and happiness to be part of that team. It doesn’t feel like it is like it’s come at like a negative cost and I’m sure there’s been huge sacrifices to get to that place, but people seem to have joy. And I’m like, that’s performance, isn’t it?

Kate Hayes [00:21:08]:
It’s such a great word that, isn’t it? Joy. But it makes me smile to hear you say that, that so many times you come off the back of a major tournament and as I said, I’ve been so lucky. I’ve had the opportunity to be. I was out in Tokyo at the Olympic Games. I’ve been at World Championships, I’ve been at, you know, sat in Twickenham Stadium watching Harlequins in the, in the Premiership final. I’ve had the opportunity to be in some unbelievable environments and experience some unbelievable things. And, and you always get asked at the end of it, oh, how was it? It’s so difficult to describe. It’s so difficult to describe that experience.

Kate Hayes [00:21:40]:
And, and that’s something that we may get to. Around. How do you decompress from things like that? But that was my answer. Around the kind of Euros this year, how was it? I just experienced absolute joy. It was an absolute joy to be part of that, to work alongside those staff and to work alongside those players. It felt joyful. And ultimately, how amazing is that? To be able to come away from something which could be potential is perceived as, you know, incredibly high pressure. And you’re overriding emotion of that is one of joy.

Nicky Lowe [00:22:14]:
So if we start with this first piece around people, what might be some of the Key things that you can share that are in the book around. You talk there about super strengths and knowing people’s super strength, but in the book you also talk about boat sinker behaviors. Can you share a little bit about how do you approach that with a team?

Kate Hayes [00:22:33]:
Yeah, I think the first thing that I will say at this point, and I’m sometimes unpopular for saying this, but I think any business or organization that you walk into has values, which are quite often nice posters on a wall that look very pretty and they depict different things like the, the climb up the mountain or various different, different elements. And one of the things that I’ve learned through my career is that it can sometimes be incredibly futile to take a group of disparate personalities that have very different value systems, that have had. That have got different genetics, different. Have grown up in different environments, have got different experiences. And the result of that have very different value systems and try to align them and make them be the same. So that one of the big pieces around this. Who are we? Is really getting into people’s individual values. Because I think at an individual level that is incredibly important.

Kate Hayes [00:23:22]:
Like what you value is going to be very different to me, but that will drive your behavior. That will. That will cause you to react in a certain way to certain situations that I may or may not react to. So I think having an understanding of people’s value systems and their context is incredibly important on an individual level, less so in teams. So the first, the first thing that I’d be looking to do is, is just who is this person? What are they all about? What some of their. What are some of their experiences? What does that mean for them? And you know, people often question that and do we. Do. Do we really need to know each other inside out? And how important is that in a position performance context? And my response to that is relatively simple.

Kate Hayes [00:24:00]:
I don’t think you can hold people to account under pressure if you don’t have a connection with that individual. Now that connection can vary at levels of depth. But the only way that you can really hold the mirror up and hold people to account in a way in which that will be accepted and contribute to performance gains is this. There are some, some element of connection. So I do think that work is incredibly important. So when we’re. The first step that we usually take with the team is around, that is, what do we know about each other and what are some of the examples that we can share. And then that then leads into this idea around and what are people’s strengths? What are People’s super strengths.

Kate Hayes [00:24:41]:
What are people’s strengths? What are their areas of acceptable weakness and what are their boat sinkers as you’ve referred to. And essentially that’s positive psychology. It’s taking a positive psychology approach. And that’s sometimes where sports psychology or performance psychology can differ from other areas of psychology. Psychology traditionally has been to help people that are struggling reach a level of effective functioning. Whereas what we tend to do as sports psychologists is we quite often work with people that are functioning perfectly well, in fact are thriving and, and doing brilliantly by helping them find additional percentages to elevate their performance. So positive psychology lends itself to that incredibly well. And one of the pieces of work that, that we quite often do is actually looking at a strength based approach of how can we absolutely maximize the things that people are brilliant at? Because sometimes that gives you better bang for your buck than spending a huge amount of time trying to pull up the areas that aren’t so great.

Kate Hayes [00:25:43]:
And that’s where those definitions come from. So super strength is what’s the thing that you have the capability of being the best in the world at? What’s your real competitive edge? All said and done, what’s the reason why you’re picked? What’s the reason why you’re in this job? Why have you been selected into slt? What’s the thing that stands you apart? And then the strengths is about the different areas, things that you, that you’re good at. The areas of acceptable weakness are that you can’t be good at everything. And actually we can waste a lot of time trying to improve things that, yeah, they’re not quite where they could be. But they’re not sinking the boat, they’re not getting in the way of performance. That’s different than to the boat sinkers. Like what is the stuff that’s absolutely getting in the way of the performance unless we put a plan in place around that, it’s going to sink the boat. So we kind of spend our time focusing on super strength strengths and eradicating boat sinkers and maybe less time on all the different elements that yeah, they’re not areas of strength, but they’re acceptable weaknesses and they’re not sinking the boat.

Nicky Lowe [00:26:41]:
And I would encourage people, when they get the book and read it, you share some of the methodologies that you absolutely do to, as you said, talk about how do you get to know somebody. There’s the great timeline that you share in there. And so there’s, you know, you share the actual detail which I think is Brilliant. Because you properly like pulled back the curtains and gone. This is what I do. Which I think is really powerful because a lot of teams know, oh, it’d be great to know what your zone of genius is and all of that. But you’re like, how do you do that? And you share the how as well as the why and what we’re doing this for.

Kate Hayes [00:27:13]:
The thing is, as well, every, every team is different, isn’t it? And so having some ideas, that’s my biggest hope for the book actually, is that it just sparks creative conversations and people wanting to go and explore and be curious about this space. Because what works in one team maybe won’t work in another. But if you know what you’re going after, then it’s part of the fun is to think of different creative ways of how you might get to that end. Goal.

Nicky Lowe [00:27:37]:
Yeah. And just not underestimating the power of this. I do a women’s leadership retreat with actually somebody that’s background is in UK sports and he introduced the timeline on this retreat and it is so powerful to do. Like, often people are in tears and we talk about connection and psychological safety. Get into that place where you can talk about the highs and lows in your life. And then I’m just thinking about a conversation I had last week. I was coaching a new client, met with her and her line manager, who’s the sponsor of the coaching. And her line managers reflected back to her super strength.

Nicky Lowe [00:28:17]:
And her super strength was that she cared as deeply about their customers as the line manager. And they both started crying because she was like, I know that I can totally trust you. And what we were talking about in that coaching was some of her potential boat sinkers as well. But because she shared like, this is your super strength. And I, I just so appreciate that about you. Again, that level of trust of like, I’ve got your back because I really respect you for your super strengths, but we’ve got to deal with some of these boat sinkers. And again, it’s like, this is so powerful because it was like, okay, that’s not criticism, it’s a reality. I need to.

Nicky Lowe [00:28:54]:
Is holding up the mirror, but doing it in that powerful way.

Kate Hayes [00:28:56]:
And it’s the conversations that we don’t have, isn’t it? Like, that’s one of the. One of. We did a similar example with the lionesses in, in. When I, when I started in England, we were nine months out from the, from the home euros and one of the first activities we did as a team was that timeline exercise which essentially is taking it in, taking a piece of paper, drawing a horizontal line down, down the middle and then just plotting out some of life experiences from birth to the present day. So the good stuff above the line, the difficult or the more challenging things below the line and encouraging individuals to share that story. The caveat to that is, is, and I think it’s important in any kind of session like this is that people have to be comfortable with what they share. So everybody owns the safety of that exercise. People only will share the things that they are willing to and only ever really on a kind of one to one level.

Kate Hayes [00:29:46]:
The purpose isn’t then to come back in a group and share the ins and outs, but more to share the experience. And that day was no exception. So the, the players and some of the staff had gone off in pairs. They’d started to share a little bit of their history and some of the things they’ve experienced. And one of the, when we brought the group back, we just gave them the option. Do you want to share anything about how you found that last. Last hour or so and anything that stuck out to you? And I still remember one of the individuals saying, I’ve spent the last 10 years on campus with the person that I was partnered with and nothing they told me today I knew. And it’s so powerful.

Kate Hayes [00:30:23]:
And some of the staff, like a staff member a few weeks ago referred back to that session again because the person that they’d spent time with on that afternoon, they still feel like they’ve got a connection with them. And we work with multiple different personalities. We work in environments, very varied individuals and different collections of personalities. And we’re not always going to get on with everybody. We’re not all always going to like the people that we, that we work and strive alongside. But having some understanding of them and what impact that has on who they are and how they, how they interact is really, really important. We don’t, we make assumptions as human beings. We make lots and lots of assumptions, don’t we? We assume that because somebody’s behav behaved in a certain way, we attach meaning to that.

Kate Hayes [00:31:08]:
But what, what this kind of work does is it gives you context. So it doesn’t necessarily put you in a position where you say, well, I completely, I completely agree with that. Now I understand that they do that and I agree with it. You may not agree with it, but you will at least have a context and an understanding behind the behavior. And that’s the thing that enables people to work effectively together, I think.

Nicky Lowe [00:31:27]:
Yeah. And it’s just reminded me of relationship therapy, where they talk about when you’ve got connection, you can conf. You can manage conflict really healthily.

Kate Hayes [00:31:36]:
Yeah. Carefrontation, someone said the other day what a great way of describing that. I can’t remember who it was. I was in a comic conversation with someone recently and they. They described it as. Carefrontation is being able to connect with honesty and. And hold to an account, which actually is a form of care.

Nicky Lowe [00:31:53]:
Yeah. And that’s where the growth happens, isn’t it? We can. We can hold that space.

Kate Hayes [00:31:57]:
Yeah.

Nicky Lowe [00:31:58]:
So there’s so much more we could talk about around people, but unconscious, we’ve got to go to the other building blocks as well. So you then talked about purpose. And I think again in the book, it’s so powerful because purpose is often banded around in the corporate space and it’s a bit like values, like we put it on the wall. But I know that obviously from sports. We know so much around athletes that might have had a purpose to win gold. They get their gold and then they go into, like this deep depression afterwards because they’re like, oh, was that it? And I think the work you do is to take it to, like, beyond that. Can you speak a bit about how you work with purpose?

Kate Hayes [00:32:33]:
Yeah. And I think the example that you’ve given there is a really good one. And we certainly have experienced this working in Olympic sport, and it’s been termed at times the Olympic blues. And it’s exactly that, is that individuals have been working so hard to achieve an aim and then they have their moment and they achieve that. And anecdotally, quite often the athletes that struggle in the aftermath of the Olympic Games are sometimes the most successful ones is the ones that have actually gone and achieved that goal. Because then what does it mean? And there’s many athletes that have spoken really eloquently around that, is that you chase this dream and then you achieve the dream, and where does that leave you? And this is kind of the thing around the purpose is that in an ideal world, your purpose shouldn’t. Shouldn’t necessarily be outcome related. Is that.

Kate Hayes [00:33:18]:
What’s the driver behind that? Because an outcome and a success and an achievement gives you a platform to be able to do a multitude of other things. And again, there’s a great example from the lionesses around that, like the. The team on the bus to Trafalgar Square after that Euros win in 2022 started to shape their letter to the government around equal access for women in schools. And that was a real. It’s a real, really strong driver amongst the team around how they can utilize their platform for societal impact and for greater good. And of course, competing in a Euros, winning a tournament in it elevates your platform. But it gave them then the opportunity to do something phenomenal. And I think that that’s essentially what we mean with the higher purpose.

Kate Hayes [00:34:08]:
It’s that is that what is the thing, what’s the thing that that stands the test of time, that isn’t dependent upon an Olympic gold medal or a tournament win? What’s the thing that in five years time, 10 years time still remains true because it’s integral to who you are as a person or an organization or a business. And I think that’s a litmus test of a North Star is does it stand the test of time? And it can be related to achievement. Of course it can. But in an ideal world, it’s separate from results. There’s a really good example of this. I was contacted by Cambridge Women rowing Club in 2014 and the Women. There’s a race that takes place on the River Thames, the Tideway, every single year between Oxford and Cambridge. And most people are familiar with it.

Kate Hayes [00:34:52]:
It’s a huge, huge sporting event. It’s watched by hundreds of thousands of people live and millions on tv. But what people are less familiar with, unless you really follow the boat race, is that the women were never allowed to race the boat race on the tideway on the Thames. The race, the women raced on a different stretch of water a few days earlier. So when we talk about the boat race, we’re really referring to the men’s Oxford Cambridge Boat Race. And then the boat race got some sponsorship through an investment bank. And the condition of the sponsorship was equality, is that they wanted those women to have the same opportunity to be able to race the tideway, to have the media interest, the same opportunities as their male counterparts, the same training facilities, the same support, etc. And I mean, when this project got relayed to me, I was all in.

Kate Hayes [00:35:37]:
That’s the sort of thing where I’m like, okay, how can you not get involved in something like that? But that group of women, that crew, they were just phenomenal women. They had such high standards of work, such huge work ethic, but such humility. They were an absolute joy to work with. And that is a huge piece of work that we did with that group. That year Oxford had a Olympic medalist in their crew, and the Cambridge crew, they had some phenomenally talented athletes in there, but not. They weren’t matched on the experience of what they were coming up again. So our journey that year was all about how do we make sure on race day, when the helicopter’s flying above and there’s all these thousands of people and that’s an experience that they’re not used to. How do we make sure that we provide the best opportunity for them to be able to do what they’re capable of on that day? And the chips will fall as they may in terms of results.

Kate Hayes [00:36:31]:
So we spend a lot of time working with that group around. Well, why? I mean, they’re getting up before the crack of dawn, they’re going out in the freezing cold, they’re training, then they’re going to university, they’re studying all day, they’re training again in the evening, they’re then catching up on their work, they’re finishing at midnight and they’re all doing it again. And I was really curious, what’s driving that? Like, what is important to you? And where we got to with the crew that year was it’s all about challenging the status quo. It was all about leaving a legacy. It was all about standing on the shoulders of those that have come before and those that will come after to drive change. And so then, of course, you want to win. Anybody that works in performance, anyone that works in business, you want to be the best, you want to win, you want to generate more sales, you want to make the most money, you want to get the gold medal, whatever that looks like. But what else? Yeah, like, if you achieve that, then what else? What else do you gain from that? And if you don’t, then what else do you get? What do you gain? Because otherwise it can be a futile process at times, can’t it? So, of course, those girls were disappointed that they didn’t win the boat race that year, but they had achieved their North Star.

Kate Hayes [00:37:35]:
That still all remained true. They challenged the stages Crow, they left legacy. They went down in history as the first woman to ever row the tideway. And so it’s what. What is it that connects us that’s far greater than what we’re going to do on that day?

Nicky Lowe [00:37:48]:
I think that’s such a great example. And it reminds me of Adam Peaty in the swimming this summer. And he got silver when he was kind of meant to get gold, but he was genuinely like. And he talked about, like, how much he struggled with addiction and mental health, but he seemed to be like, I’m totally at peace with this because my purpose was bigger than that gold. And I remember our mutual friend Katie Warren, or Katie Mobad, talking about being in the Olympic village. And she walked past and saw him sitting on a bench just like taking in the atmosphere and taking in the moment. And she was like, that success, like he totally looked at peace and so present and not. Yeah.

Nicky Lowe [00:38:31]:
And I’m like, oh, that the goal, isn’t it? That that’s that sustainable success that you talk.

Kate Hayes [00:38:37]:
Yeah.

Nicky Lowe [00:38:38]:
And.

Kate Hayes [00:38:38]:
And Tom. Tom Daly talks about that and he put it really beautifully around. It took him a long time to realize that he’s not the main character, he’s only the main character in his own story. And actually we spend so much time, don’t we, worrying about how we’re being perceived, what other people think, like managing our own expectations, the expectations of others, feeling that we need to do all these different things. And then at some point, ideally people get to that turning point in their life where they actually get some perspective.

Nicky Lowe [00:39:10]:
And hopefully. And the work that you do is. It’s not hitting a brick wall. It’s not like having that breakdown to get the perspective. So I’m conscious of time and we’ve got another two blocks to cover. So can you talk us through the next two?

Kate Hayes [00:39:24]:
Yeah. The, the how we play is essentially about method. It’s essentially about having absolute clarity. And really, I suppose it’s plan, do review, like goal setting is easy to thing in the world to do, but it’s one of the most difficult to do well. And it’s really interrogating performance. It’s being absolutely crystal clear on what success looks like, what the key performance indicators are, whether we are performing in relation to those and if not why. And I think it’s being. It’s taking a huge concerted effort to interrogate the underpinning reasons for performance or underperformance.

Kate Hayes [00:40:00]:
Because when you. Quite often that happens in sport is when you start to review performances, you can review it cognitively and in relation to what happened. Well, we should have done this, but we did that or that didn’t work or. But if we remain true to the point at the start of this call was everybody has to be crystal clear on the game plan. Well, if we’re clear on the game plan but we didn’t do it, then why is that? Well, it’s either because the game plan wasn’t quite right or it’s because we didn’t execute it. Well, if we didn’t execute that, then why is that? And essentially the. How we play the method piece is all about really understanding what are the factors that relate to success and what are some of the Things that derail or get in the way. And sports psychology as a discipline is about that.

Kate Hayes [00:40:42]:
It’s about over time, recreating the good, eliminating the bad, having a thorough understanding of the factors that underpin success and creating opportunities as much as possible to ensure that they’re in play, whilst eradicating the things that aren’t working. And there are lots of examples that I can give, but we’re going to completely derail and just go off in a million different directions. But essentially it’s like, what is your method and your process for performing? But also what is the day to day, the week to week, the month to month? What does that look like? What’s the method of the system? How is that set up? Is it set up in a way in which steep people are still able to be creative, People are able to analyze like, and it’s matching the personalities of the people that are involved. So there’s a big piece to that. But the crux of it is, is does our method align to what we’re going after to achieve under pressure? And are we planning, are we reviewing, are we executing in the right way?

Nicky Lowe [00:41:39]:
And I think the thing I took from that, that really relates back to kind of the work I do with my clients is are we having the kind of conversations that we really need to have? Like you talked about holding up the mirror and being. Let’s have the honest conversation we really need to have here. Let’s not skim over it.

Kate Hayes [00:41:55]:
No. And it always surprises me and I guess this goes back to the strength based versus deficit based approaches that there’s so many of my friends work in a whole range of different contexts. And when I talk to them about like performance, performance reviews, they’re always interested in what happens in sport. And then they’ll say, well yeah, we have a PDR like every six months or like it. It blows my mind. And I think that’s that. And of course all contexts are different. People do this in different ways.

Kate Hayes [00:42:22]:
But in sport you’re so entrenched and in so used to interrogating everything, every single training session, every single day. What worked? Why? What do we learn from that? How does that inform what we do tomorrow? What didn’t? Why not? What’s the thing that we need to change? How might that look? Well, let’s go again tomorrow. And it seems quite alien to me that someone would sit down at a six month point and review the previous six months in terms of how that’s gone. Like it’s a constant process and it’s Exciting, it’s, it’s fun, it’s fun to engage in that kind of work regularly.

Nicky Lowe [00:42:54]:
And I always kind of have to say to my corporate clients like you spend like 100 perform, perform, perform. Whereas in elite sports you get 80% like practice and 20 perform. So there is more capacity to do that stuff. And that’s why it’s like what can we borrow and how can we do more of that?

Kate Hayes [00:43:10]:
Do you know? That’s the question I get most often when I do work in corporate settings. It’s like, well, you know, we’re very different to sport. You get four years to prepare for an event and then you have to execute and then, or you work in a professional sport and it’s week in, week out or you work in an international window and. But actually I don’t think it’s as different as people think. I think that’s probably my learn. Like of course in business and in corporate context you’re having to, to perform all the time you’re performing, but you are in a sporting context too. It’s just a different level of performance. You have to show up every single training session, you have to perform every single day.

Kate Hayes [00:43:49]:
Because there’s always that underlying voice around how it’s those day to day that leads to selection, that then leads to the increased in pressure. So it’s different and similar, but I would argue it’s more similar than maybe than people think. I think we live in a day to day, day to day performance world and I do think you can interrogate performance as you’re performing.

Nicky Lowe [00:44:08]:
Yeah.

Kate Hayes [00:44:09]:
And actually having mechanisms and strategies for how to do that is really useful. I think it, I think I do talk about that in the book. In terms of performing in action, what does that look like and how do you prime and how do you make sense of stuff as it’s going on?

Nicky Lowe [00:44:21]:
Yeah. And again, so many practical tools in.

Kate Hayes [00:44:24]:
There, the ebb and flow that you don’t get so much. I guess in businesses around like off season. There’s no such thing as an off season, is it? If you’re working in banking or in some of those other sectors, then what does that look like? And then I think that that’s about, okay, well how do you microdose that then? How do you microdose rest and recovery? How do you ensure people are able to continue to perform at that level without getting set periods where you know that now you can pull off the brake, you can put on the brakes a little bit.

Nicky Lowe [00:44:49]:
So finally the environment piece and I think we might have to get you back for like round two to get into some of the real specifics because there’s so much just in, in the environment piece like from like psychology on the on the grass to stadiums and skills and all of that. So. And you also talk about collapsing don’t ice a collapsing cake. Like there’s so many nuggets in this part of the book. So talk me like at a high level what this is about.

Kate Hayes [00:45:14]:
I love that analogy of don’t ice a collapsing cake. Which essentially what that means is I think sometimes we spend time thinking about strategies to cope. Like in so many different environments, in so many different contexts, we’re operating right on the edge of our coping resources. Sports no exception to that. Neither is business. And in fact it’s not just business in the sense of the word that most people go to teachers, there’s any kind of context, people are working long hours, high pressure, where there are consequences for results. And this idea of where we can learn breathing techniques for example, there’s visualization, there’s lots of different strategies that we can utilize. And yes they are all can be incredibly powerful.

Kate Hayes [00:45:59]:
But it’s almost the icing on the top of the cake that if that cake isn’t solid, if the foundation isn’t there, then those strategies will only get you so far. So the idea about this last section is that what does that foundation look like? Are we putting strategies on top of a solid foundation and is that going to stand us in good stead to be able to sustain performance over time? And I always find it quite interesting. Quite often with teams I’ve asked them to kind of reflect on their, their, their wellbeing and their self care. And wellbeing essentially is an umbrella term for different facets. Physical health, psychological health, spiritual health, financial health, social health, educational. There’s different component parts that make up well being. But when you ask people to reflect on their self care strategies and what they spend their time engaging in, you’ll always find that there is a they prioritize some areas over others. We’re actually, we sometimes achieve the greatest levels of well being by being more deliberate and balanced in how we and how we look after ourselves in our self care.

Kate Hayes [00:47:01]:
So that foundation piece is just around it is how are people managing themselves in the context in which they live and work. And you would have heard this a million times. The car, the whole like bucket analogy. Like everyone’s got a stress bucket and you fill that bucket up to the point that it overspills well then it makes incredible mess and it’s a huge amount of work to, to clean it up. Far better that you make some holes in it and you let some of that water out over time so that it never gets to the point of, of burst. And the reality of the situation is every individual, they’re. The starting capacity is different. Some people have far greater capacity than others.

Kate Hayes [00:47:40]:
Their buckets bigger, some it feels quicker. But what we do know is everybody needs to have mechanisms by which they, they keep some element of balance. Because as we said, as we said earlier, the cost of not doing so is just incredibly high.

Nicky Lowe [00:47:55]:
And there is so much in there, isn’t there? So my final question to you is then, because you’re a busy working mummy, am I right in saying you’ve got three children?

Kate Hayes [00:48:02]:
Yeah, I’ve got three kids, yeah.

Nicky Lowe [00:48:04]:
So what do you do? What practically are some of the things that you do around that? Because you, like you’re working in a demanding environment, I’m imagining, and you live a very busy life. So what does that practically look like for you?

Kate Hayes [00:48:17]:
To be honest with you, I’ve had to learn some hard lessons and I don’t think I’ve always got it right. It’s challenging and. But one of the things, and this is really simple, but the thing that’s made me, that made the biggest difference for me over these last few years is just asking myself a really simple question. Like, I’ve gone, I’ve worked through my why with Katie, actually, our, our shared friend. And I found that process brilliant. And I’m a big believer in that. There’s everything that I would, I would support others to do. I will go through that process myself.

Kate Hayes [00:48:52]:
And my values are, I have strong values around family and my priorities. And if anybody ever says to you, to me, what’s the most important thing to you is, of course it’s my family, it’s my husband, it’s my kids. But then the question that I always follow that up to myself is, and how have you prioritized your time this week of the things that are most important to you? How much time have you prioritized there in comparison? And what I’ve been guilty of many, many times is that the things that are most important to me are not the things that are sometimes prioritized the most in terms of my time and how my working week unfolds? And I think as I’ve got older, as I’ve probably got more confident, as I’ve got more used to working in this space, I’m better able these days to prioritize time when it matters. And again, just honest conversations at home. I have a busy mind and I like solving things and making sense of stuff and working it through and working at home sometimes now, as a lot of us do, going from that environment downstairs and back into family again. I’m in the room, but I’m not there. I’m still processing, I’m still trying to make sense of what’s happened. So one of the really simple things for me is just there has to be some sense making time in a day.

Kate Hayes [00:50:08]:
And for me, like going out on a walk or getting on a bike or doing something, yes, it’s activity, but actually the bigger driver for me is sense making. I need quiet, I need to figure things out in my head. And I found that moving enables me to do that. So giving myself that space, giving myself time to make sense of stuff, means that I can be present in the family more. And the reality of it is the world keeps turning right, things don’t. There’s no disaster that happens. Spending more time as a mum and more time with the kids isn’t creating issues elsewhere. And I think sometimes we need to learn that we need to experience that is that we take so much responsibility.

Kate Hayes [00:50:48]:
And I definitely have a tendency to do that, to take responsibility for things that I’m not always responsible for. And actually letting go of that sometimes is the biggest growth area and development that we can. That we can achieve. It gives. And I think you learn that as a leader as well, being in management positions. What I’ve learned over time is actually you need brilliant people in the right place and you need to give them permission to go. And actually, like, I’ve at times probably struggled with that, that control component of wanting to be in control of everything. And I’ve had to learn how to.

Kate Hayes [00:51:21]:
To let those things go. Essentially, people are more successful when you work collaboratively together and you give people opportunity to. To fly.

Nicky Lowe [00:51:29]:
And that’s such a beautifully honest response because it’s like, it’s not all tied up in a neat bow because you’re a performance psychologist. And yeah, I’ve got this stuff nailed. Like, we’re all working through it, we’re all work in progress. I would. I’m going to put you on the spot here and say I would love to invite you back for part two because I think there is so much we could dive into around this psychology on the pitch. I also want to ask you about, kind of with women’s psychology specifically, because obviously you are head of women’s psychology, but I know we’ve run out of time for today, so I’m hoping we can get you back for part two and continue.

Kate Hayes [00:52:03]:
If you’re willing to have me again, I would be more than happy to come back from for part two. Of course I would. It’s been real pleasure to speak to you.

Nicky Lowe [00:52:09]:
Thank you Kat. And it goes without saying I would recommend every single person and listening gets your book how to Win Lessons in Success from the Front Line of performance psychology by Dr. Kate Hayes. It is genuinely I a huge kudos to you writing this on top of a full time job with three kids. But like it is, it is phenomenal. So thank you for sharing it with us.

Kate Hayes [00:52:34]:
Thank you so much. Thanks Nikki. Thanks for having me.

Nicky Lowe [00:52:38]:
If you’ve enjoyed if you enjoyed this episode of Wisdom for Working Mums, I’d love for you to share it on social media or with the amazing women in your life. I’d also love to connect with you, so head over to luminate co.uk where you’ll find ways to stay in touch. And if this episode resonated with you, one of the best ways to support the show is by subscribing and leaving a review on itunes. Your review helps other women discover this resource, so together we can lift each other up as we rise. So thanks for listening. Until next time. Take care.