Nicky Lowe [00:00:00]:
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. It’s unusual for me to invite a guest back on the podcast, so when I do, you know that they’ve really stayed with me.

Nicky Lowe [00:00:53]:
And that’s absolutely true of today’s guest, Dr. Kate Hayes, who I’m so delighted to welcome back to the show. If you listen to our first conversation, you’ll know we only just scratched the surface. And Kate very kindly offered to come back and I knew straight away there was one topic I wanted to explore with her more deeply and that’s confidence. And if you didn’t catch that first episode, I’d really encourage you to go back and listen after this one. It’s episode 177. We talked about the Lioness’s success, Kate’s brilliant book how to Win and the building blocks of sustainable high performance. It’s such a powerful conversation and genuinely one of my personal favorites.

Nicky Lowe [00:01:35]:
Now, confidence is one of those things that we talk about all the time, especially as women, but I’m not sure we often stop to really unpack it. Like what actually is confidence? Where does it come from? Why can it feel so solid in one area of our lives and so shaky in another? And Kate brings a unique and powerful perspective to this conversation. She is head of Women’s Performance Psychology at the Football Association. She’s worked with the Lionesses as well as other world class athletes and elite teams performing under immense pressure. And a PhD focused on the role of confidence in world class sport performance. So there are few people better placed to help us understand this topic. In today’s episode, we’re exploring what confidence really is, whether female confidence differs from male confidence and how we can build it in a way that feels grounded, evidence based and lasting. I know you’re going to love this, so I won’t keep Kate any longer.

Nicky Lowe [00:02:37]:
So welcome Kate. It’s great to have you back.

Kate Hayes [00:02:40]:
Thank you. I’m very excited to be back. Favorite subject area. So it Wasn’t, it wasn’t a problem at all.

Nicky Lowe [00:02:47]:
Brilliant. And I always say that it takes a lot for me to invite somebody back as a guest. So you always know that you’re an amazing guest when that happens. This subject we were really keen to get onto last time, but we didn’t. So thank you for making the time to come back. So clearly we are talking about confidence today, which I know is your kind of not only passion topic but is your area of expertise. Can you just say a little bit about what led you to focus on this area in your PhD and what confidence actually means? Because it’s a word that we band around a lot. But I would love from a kind of performance psychology perspective to get your insight on that.

Kate Hayes [00:03:28]:
Yes. So when I was much, much younger I used to compete in track and field and swim and or the only thing I ever wanted to be was the next Sally Gun or Kelly Holmes. There was lots of really amazing female role models as I was growing up. It wasn’t meant to be, I got knee injuries, etc. However, when I was competing, if I was racing on a Saturday, by Wednesday I was already anxious. So I spent the three days leading into event running it over and over in my head, getting myself worked up and actually it was my dad at the time that played the role unknowingly as a bit of a sports psychologist that used to walk me around the track and we go through the process of the race and, and all those kind of things. So when my, my running career was no more, it was an obvious decision for me to kind of go into that space. And then it was during my Masters that I was reading up on confidence and the research that had been done and but like anything research is quite often done university students with student populations.

Kate Hayes [00:04:30]:
And what I really wanted to know was, well, how does this relate to the best of the best? So my PhD focused on athletes that were ranked in the top three in the world in their sport. So men and women, I wanted to know, okay, well, but what does that look like when you get to the highest, highest, highest levels of sport? Do we still see these same patterns? And that’s what fascinated me in the subject, which led me to get into it. And to your point, we do talk about confidence a lot and what do we mean by that? And very, very simply, confidence is a set of evidence based beliefs. So it’s the belief you hold about something because you have evidence to say that that is true. So I’m confident that I can throw a lasagna together because I Know the recipe, I’ve done it lots of times. And when, when time’s tight and you’re trying to get three kids out the door an hour later, I’m confident that I can do that. But that comes from being taught how to do it, knowing what the recipe is. Off the top of my head, I’ve done it many, many, many times before.

Kate Hayes [00:05:27]:
So it almost becomes now an automatic thing. And, and so that’s a very, very silly small example. But that, that is essentially what we mean by confidence. So this idea of you either have it or you don’t, you’re born with it, you’re confident or you’re not, it’s just simply not true. All of us can be confident about a multitude of different things, but we do have to proactively build that.

Nicky Lowe [00:05:46]:
Yeah, love that. And what difference does it make? So if we’ve got it or we haven’t got it, why is it important? Particularly in elite sports but in any walk of life?

Kate Hayes [00:05:57]:
Yeah, because it influences the way that we think, feel and behave. So that One of the most consistent findings in the research literature is a direct correlation between confidence and high levels of performance. So when people are confident, they interpret that performance feeling as excitement versus anxiety. They are a swimmer for example, will still go hell to leather down and won’t let anyone come past them in the last length like it, it translates into behavior. So that was kind of the, that was kind of the focus of the first part of my PhD is that when people are confident, what does that mean? And that’s essentially what we find. Their focus was more effective. They focused in on the right things. They weren’t getting distracted by noise.

Kate Hayes [00:06:44]:
They, they felt excitement, joy. Their behaviors were effective. They, their body language, it translated into the things actually that lead to successful performance. And when people weren’t feeling confident, the opposite of that was true. So anxiety, worry, what if thinking, not being able to focus on the task at hand because they were being distracted by intrusive thoughts, not having the confidence to take risks, make that more risky decisions within the performance itself. So, so it’s essentially, it impacts performance through how it influences how we think, feel and behave. But then the two things are linked if you think about it. Because if we say that confidence is a set of evidence based beliefs, you’re building it over time.

Kate Hayes [00:07:30]:
So what you’re essentially doing is creating scenarios that enable you to think more effectively. You’re doing the groundwork. Confidence comes from preparation. So is it that we’re more confident or is it just that we’re simply more prepared and that enables us to feel more confident, which then has a positive impact on our performances.

Nicky Lowe [00:07:48]:
Because it’s systemic, isn’t it? Like you pull one thread, but as you were saying that my mind went to. And I’m sure you’ve got so much insight around this, you can have like I’m thinking about clients that are so prepared, they are, you know, the master over preparing, overthinking, overdoing it. And by that definition, if they’re prepared, they would be confident. But sometimes that over preparing can damage their confidence. So it’s, it’s so nuanced around it, I’m imagining.

Kate Hayes [00:08:19]:
Well, yeah, because what, and this is, this is the interesting pieces is because what are you preparing for? So ultimately people are you to usually let’s, let’s take a business example. They’re delivering a pitch, preparing to go into an interview. You can compare, prepare, prepare, prepare. But what you’re preparing is your knowledge base. What you’re not preparing is your ability to translate that in a different context. And ultimately, when we’re trying to develop our context, what we’re, when we’re trying to develop our confidence, we need to develop it in relation to the context. So as soon as you start bringing consequences into play, as soon as there’s something to be won or lost, then people change. So really to develop confidence in a performance, you have to develop confidence in your ability to perform.

Kate Hayes [00:09:08]:
And that’s very different. To develop, prepare, preparing your, your knowledge, your experience, your intel, what you’re going to say, it’s closing the gap between being able to deliver when the stakes are low and being able to also deliver when the stakes are really high. And there’s an example of this actually in the book around my daughter who was auditioning for a part in the play. And it’s a great example. So she wanted to audition for a part in the school play. So she learned a line. She prepared, she prepared, she prepared. She, she recited to myself and to my husband and we did it in the family, etc.

Kate Hayes [00:09:45]:
But that’s completely different to walking into an audition, to having four people sat behind a stage. The gap between how she was preparing and what she needed to do to perform was too great. So then the limbic system kicks in. You get that fight, flight, freeze response and you don’t have access to your lines anymore. You don’t have access to the human part of your brain that you need to access. So yes, she was confident in her ability to learn the lines in our house, but not confident in her ability to know them, to be able to present them with ease in a audition scenario when there was something to be won or lost.

Nicky Lowe [00:10:24]:
Because in your book you talk about that being psychology on the grass, don’t you?

Kate Hayes [00:10:27]:
Yeah, exactly. It’s preparing correctly for those moments and building, building the pressure actually gives confidence. So you develop confidence by understanding that you’re developing the ability to be able to do these things. So, so in, in a sport, in context, if you imagine performing at the olympics is a 10 out of 10 and executing your skills in a low level training session with nobody watching you is a 1 out of 10, what we’ll do is we’ll work with the athletes around. Okay, well, what is a two out of ten? What’s a three? A four or five or six?

Nicky Lowe [00:11:00]:
Okay.

Kate Hayes [00:11:01]:
And then we work with them to help them develop the skills to be able to execute their performances in a graduating process so that by the time they get into the Olympic Games, they have the confidence in their ability not just to execute their skill, but to execute their skill under the greatest pressure in a moment where they need to be able to perform. And I don’t think we do that well enough with people in school or in business or in any context. Actually, I don’t think we properly prepare people for performance because one of the

Nicky Lowe [00:11:33]:
things when watching the lionesses over the last, you know, however many years, and I’m not going to ask you to share what you do because I’m sure that’s not something that you are able to share, but you can see that whatever you’ve done with them under the pressure of penalty shootouts has made such a difference because you see that they just seem so calm and composed under pressure and you’re like, oh my God, how do you simulate that level of pressure? Because you’ve got millions of people watching, you know, the nation’s hopes on their shoulders. So you can see whatever you’ve done behind the scenes to build that psychology on the grass has made a significant impact.

Kate Hayes [00:12:11]:
Wow. I wouldn’t. I’m going to be humble here and say that that, that is not related necessarily back to me. Those girls are, are brilliant and are, and are experienced professionals. But any athlete that is able to execute any level of skill in those moments has prepared for being able to do that. So they will have a level of confidence in their ability to execute a skill at a moment in time. That doesn’t mean that you don’t still feel the, the, the anxiety, the consequence, etc. It’s that you feel that but you expect that and know that you can do it anyway.

Kate Hayes [00:12:49]:
And that’s a really important part of this too, like the that it’s a myth that anybody skips out onto a stage or into an exam or a driving test, Olympic stage. And you know, a lot of the time those individuals at that moment in time would rather be anywhere else in the world. But actually that’s okay too because that’s part of the preparation is that you know how you’re going to feel in those moments and you’ve got confidence that you have the coping mechanisms to be able to deal with that and can go back to your process and execute anyway.

Nicky Lowe [00:13:19]:
I love that because you almost, you’re keeping them connected to their resources and their resourcefulness in that moment. It doesn’t like overcome them, I suppose. The thing that I’m really curious about and I think you would have a unique perspective given the work that you do, is is there a difference between how men and women experience confidence and what we might need differently if we’re working on our confidence?

Kate Hayes [00:13:45]:
There certainly seems to be within the context of sport. And it would be unfair probably for me to speak outside of that, but certainly in the context of sport we did see differences. So research with university level students, with students and student athletes would seem to suggest that as competition approaches, there is an increase in the experience of anxiety in female athletes as opposed to male athletes, and a decrease in their feelings of confidence. There were certainly differences, gender differences in my PhD study just around where the females derived their confidence from and the sorts of things that they were confident about. And the females within my study seem to be more susceptible to factors that would impact their confidence in a negative way than some of the their male compatriots.

Nicky Lowe [00:14:44]:
Okay, so what did that mean then in terms of what we might need to pay attention to? And I hear what you’re saying, you can’t necessarily extrapolate your research into all walks of life. But if we were to make some kind of assumptions or hypotheses around that, what you, what can we take from that that may be in our professional worlds?

Kate Hayes [00:15:06]:
I think at times the, the female athletes more reliant on source, on uncontrollable sources of confidence. So we’re more reliant on feedback from others potentially they were more, they were more paid greater attention to social relationships, their interaction with the people around them. So for example, where the male athletes talked about their ability and their coach to set them a training program that would win them an Olympic medal, a lot of the female Athletes talked about the dynamic between themselves and the coach, the social support of that relationship, et cetera. So they just placed different emphasis on different things. And we’re still talking about. The sample was matched on success. So these were highly successful world record holders, Olympic gold medalists, World cup winners. But there were differences just in where they derived their confidence from and the sorts of things that they were confident about.

Kate Hayes [00:16:07]:
And man or woman. The important bit is, is just to widen our sources of confidence. If we’re pulling confidence in from lots and lots of different places, then if you’re in a moment where things aren’t going quite right, you’ve, you’ve still got some stability in that source. So for an example, if you get all of your confidence from winning and this, you see this quite often with youngsters as they come through the ranks for a multitude of different reasons. Some kids are more, you know, taller, faster, bigger, stronger and win. And then sometimes when those physical differences start to balance out as they age and mature, the winning doesn’t come so easily anymore. Now, if that your confidence is solely based on your ability to win. And now you are no longer winning, your confidence can take, your confidence can take a bit of a knock.

Kate Hayes [00:16:58]:
So the key is always to be trying to develop stable basis for our confidence that we’re deriving from lots of different sources and that are also within our control. So the reason I win is because these are the things that I know that I do well. These are the strengths, these are the areas that I might need to develop. This is my plan for how I’m going to do that. And so over time you start to create some stability in the things that you feel confident about. And it’s the same when things don’t quite work out. It’s really, it’s. It.

Kate Hayes [00:17:32]:
I can’t think of the word, but it’s easy to say, oh, well, it wasn’t, it was because of the weather or it was because of X, Y and Z. Well, in the moment that might protect confidence, but in the long term it actually doesn’t at all because you’re attributing your underperformances to things that actually weren’t within your control and aren’t things that you can then work on to develop. There’s lots of different pieces to this. It’s, it’s less about gender, I think, and more about. Are people proactively working and developing in a way in which they are able to build their, their evidence basis for their confidence and are starting to analyze and think about their strengths. And the things that they could be confident about. And it always amazes me, like you, you come across unbelievable people that are being hugely successful in their field. And then you ask them, you know, talk to me about your super strengths, your strengths, why do you get picked? What are the.

Kate Hayes [00:18:22]:
And they don’t. There’s a lot of people that don’t find that easy to talk about. Yeah, I do think it’s something that is worth spending time really, really going after. Yeah.

Nicky Lowe [00:18:33]:
And I can only talk from my experience of what I see with women in kind of a professional space. And as you were talking and talking about that attribution and how women tend to use the socialization point, it reminded me of a story that I read in a book that called Untamed. It’s written by a lady called Glennon Doyle. And it talks a lot about how as women we’ve become tamed about what a good girl does or what, what girls need to do. And she tells this story as she got. Her kids, had both got friends over, so she got a son and a daughter and they’d both got friends over. And she goes into them and they’re in the playroom and she’s like, what would you like to eat? And she noticed in that moment all of the boys were just, I want, like I want pizza or I want a. Whatever it was.

Nicky Lowe [00:19:20]:
And all of her girls, the girls went, I don’t know, what, what do you fancy? What are you going to have? And they were checking and almost using that socialization to check what they should want rather than what they did want. And I think that’s such a powerful example about if we’re not able to self source our needs, our wants, our strengths, and as you say, reliant on external factors which aren’t always within our control and aren’t always predictable, that we start to lose connection to those things that could fuel our confidence. And having those multiple sources is so

Kate Hayes [00:19:55]:
important and there’s so many pieces to that, isn’t there? Personality preferences come into play. Whether somebody is more logical or empathic, whether somebody is more of a thinker or a feeler. And how people make their decisions, where they get their energy from in any kind of context, whether it’s business, sport or anything else. The most important thing is the person in front of you, isn’t it? It always is. Is where, where are they? What’s their reality? What are their demographics, what are their preferences? Because those things do make it. Those things do make a difference. We know that confidence is influenced by demographic Factors. We know confidence is influenced by organizational factors, environment, et cetera.

Kate Hayes [00:20:36]:
So there are external things that are coming to play, but within that, it’s the individual also and what their mechanisms and methods are to, to enhance that.

Nicky Lowe [00:20:46]:
And I loved how you were talking there about how they attributed whether they were successful or not. And it reminded me of Martin Seligman’s explanatory style where he talks about, you know, are you naturally optimistic or pessimistic? And how that can influence how you explain stuff to yourself around personalization or the permanence of something. So if you do fail, it’s like, oh, I’m always going to fail, rather than, oh, no, I failed in that instant. But let some pick why, what, what went on, what were the factors, what’s within my control? And just giving people that ability to, to assess that, as you say, through their unique personality and preferences. So if there’s somebody listening, going, this is all brilliant. I’m somebody that struggles with my confidence under pressure. It might be, you know, when I’m public speaking or when I’m challenged in a meeting. If you were working with them as a performance psychologist, what would be some of the things you would start to get them thinking about?

Kate Hayes [00:21:46]:
I, I always find these questions really difficult, difficult because I go straight to the, well, it depends, it depends on that individual and it very much does depend. But there are, there are some things that are true to everybody. So I would be interested in exploring times where they are confident, times where they do are able to perform in a way that they are proud of, happy. Then I would be trying to understand, well, what goes on in that scenario? What are their processes, what are their, what’s their mindset, what are the, what are their emotions, their thoughts, their feelings, the interrelation between those things. I’d be looking at ways to transfer some of that into environments that they find more difficult. It would probably lead to doing some work around mental skills training strategies that they can utilize in the moment to help them, whether that’s grounding techniques, breathing techniques, anxiety management. I would certainly be encouraging them to go through a process of objective evaluation of performance. Because quite often we evaluate what we do emotionally, don’t we? And I think as a psychologist, you get it drilled into you very early on that when we are trying to evaluate anything, whether that’s a consultancy session or a lecture or a delivery of anything, you know, what actually, what was the intention, what actually happened, what led to that, what else could have have been done? What impact might that have had? How does that lead us to think about how we might approach it differently next time.

Kate Hayes [00:23:16]:
And it’s. It’s just. It’s bringing a process to. To that situation, and then it’s gradually figuring out, instead of going from a 0 out of 10 to a 10 out of 10, how can we gradually build that over time, and how can we do that in a way that’s safe? So that person is able to develop the skills to get to the 10 out of 10, but in a systematic way where they’re developing their skills to cope along that process and are building confidence as they go.

Nicky Lowe [00:23:42]:
Yeah.

Kate Hayes [00:23:42]:
And there’s different schools and thoughts, isn’t there? I mean, flooding in traditional psychology is. Is just go to the 10 out of 10 and you will learn that you can manage and cope. And I always think about when I started out in lecturing. So I start. I did some lecturing maybe 20 or so years ago now, and in front of 200 students. That was a very daunting experience for me. And I used to lecture on a Monday morning and on a Sunday. I’d get that feeling in the pit of my stomach of, oh, it took me a year of doing that before that feeling started to subside.

Kate Hayes [00:24:20]:
It took me another year to start to say, okay, I’m comfortable. This, this is okay. And another year after that before I got to the point where actually I quite enjoy this. And one of the things that you’d mentioned to me earlier is this idea of, do you wait to be confident before you go, or do you take action and hope that the confidence catches up? And I think sometimes it’s a bit of both, isn’t it? Is that you have to be able to prepare as well as you can to take action. But sometimes it is a bit of a leap of faith, and it’s doing the thing over and over and over and over again that enables you to develop the ability to do that, and then the confidence goes with that. So now I’m okay standing in front of a stage and presenting, but I did three years of forcing myself into it every single week, week in, week out, week in, week out, until I got to the point where I felt comfortable and confident to be able to do that.

Nicky Lowe [00:25:15]:
So there are some great things in there. So you talked about flooding. Like throw yourself completely in the deep end and do that enough, you’ll learn to swim. Versus, I’m assuming another approach might be like systematic desensitization, where you just kind of keep putting yourself and adding the pressure bit by bit and, and coping. And again, I’M assuming depending on the individual, depending on their learning preference and,

Kate Hayes [00:25:39]:
and also what choice you have as well. Sometimes because, you know, many, many, many occasions we’re in jobs or we’re doing things where we just have to do it, you just have to do it. And getting support around managing that is really, really important. But we don’t often get the opportunity to. Well, you, I’m going to ask you to do this in four years time. So we’re going to build you to the point of being a. We don’t often get that luxury, do we? We have to, we have to learn on the fly. And that’s why, you know, being honest and vulnerable, being prepared to talk openly about how we’re feeling, we’re all human beings and most likely somebody else is feeling the exact same way.

Nicky Lowe [00:26:17]:
And it reminds me, I had an incident just before Christmas where I was invited onto live radio, so BBC Radio Breakfast to talk about working parents. A piece of research had come out and they’d asked me to come on as like this expert opinion. And they put me on hold whilst they were just finishing another interview and they. So I could hear the radio show and they said, right, we’ll finish this interview, we’ll go to this, this segment and then we’ll come straight to you. And as they put me on hold, I realized that they were interviewing the President of Israel. So not the Prime Minister, but the President of Israel. So one, I was like, oh, this is a huge guest that I’m about to follow. And he was talking about some very triggering things.

Nicky Lowe [00:27:03]:
And so I’m sat there and I’m like, oh, I’ve probably got about 30 seconds. My heart rate went through the roof. I was sat in the bedroom upstairs because it was breakfast. The kids were, we were trying to get the kids to school, so my husband was downstairs in the kitchen with them. And I tried to find the quietest place in the house and I could just feel like I was going into like an emotional hijack. I was like, my brain is not my own right now. And I was like, I’ve got 30 seconds and then I’ve got about 60 seconds to make an impact and then it’s done, so you better get yourself together. And it was like, what can I do in this moment? And so it was pulling on all the resources, she said, grounding, breathing.

Nicky Lowe [00:27:41]:
But it was like I couldn’t have prepared for that. Like, I would have had no idea. There was nothing I could have done to go. There’s going to be a big guess before You.

Kate Hayes [00:27:50]:
I know. And the key, I remember very clearly colleague of mine talking about the importance of three things, which is normalize, de escalate, simplify. And in that situation, the normalization of that isn’t it is most people in your shoes in that moment of time would have felt the exact same way. So that’s actually a really normal reaction to the situation that you were focused in. And then the de escalation of that is, okay, well, that’s happened. I actually have got mental skills to be able to cope with that. And then the simplification of it is, what am I here to do? And you go back to your process and there’s so many examples, so many examples of. I remember being in the audience with Chris Hoy, the cyclist was, was talking and he was talking about one of his Olympic experiences where he found himself in a situation where he knew he was going to have to break the world record in order to win.

Kate Hayes [00:28:45]:
And that immediate response, but he’d already predicted that that might happen. So as part of his preparation, it’s like I might be in a situation where I might have to cycle a world record in order to win Olympic gold. And when that happens, I’m most likely going to react to that in the very similar way to the one that you’re describing. And when I do, this is what I’m going to tell myself and this is what I’m going to do. Because ultimately our brains are wired to work in the same way. We are wired to be sensitive to threat. We don’t know the difference between threat to life and threat to ego, but we react in the same way. Being able to prepare for that, understand that that’s a normal reaction and that actually we do possess the ability and the skills to be able to manage that is what enables people to cope in those scenarios.

Kate Hayes [00:29:30]:
And breathing, I’m a huge advocate and box breathing is something that’s very commonplace in military. There’s a reason why certain contexts which are very difficult and do for obvious reasons, trigger that fight, flight, freeze, response. They teach their people to utilize these skills to get control back over the brain in those moments so that people are able to execute their task.

Nicky Lowe [00:30:00]:
And I love in your book how you talk about working with Tom Daly. So for people that are outside of the uk, they may not know that name as well as we do if we’re from Great Britain. Would you mind explaining who he is and maybe some of the things you share in your book about the specific process that you helped him work with him to develop as he was going to dive.

Kate Hayes [00:30:21]:
Yeah. So Tom Daly is a, is an Olympic. Well, amongst many things, was an Olympic, an Olympic diver. A very, very successful Olympic diver. And I think. And he talks beautifully actually in the book about his process. And diving is a fantastic sport in, for, from a psychological perspective because you have to execute six skills as close to perfection as possible in competitions that sometimes can span three hours. And each execution of skill is seconds.

Kate Hayes [00:30:54]:
And if you make one mistake, you know, potentially that could be your competition over. So being able to maintain psychological composure and, and emotionally regulate is really, really important. And Tom just talked through his process around how he did that for, for competition. So segmenting the, you know, seven divers out, I stand here, six divers out, I move up to the next board. He talked about standing at the back of the 5 meters meter board, putting his chamois over his face, working through his visualization, moving up to, to the 7 meter board and then being at the back of the 10 meter board before it was his time to execute and what he was saying to himself and you know, focusing on outcomes and winning and losing and being successful is a great motivator, but in the moment it’s really unhelpful because it creates comparison with others. And actually in the moment what we really want people to do is focus on the process, but not too much that you start to then overthink and the skill breaks down anyway. So diving is a, is an automatic skill. So we talked about keywords that prompted this, the skill chain, but without breaking the skill chain down too much so that you start to overthink and then something that should be automatic becomes clunky.

Kate Hayes [00:32:14]:
So it’s just, there’s many, many examples in sport of pre performance routines. The process people go through, the things they say to themselves, the way that they sing, the way that they think, their positive affirmations, but all of that comes through trial and error. And there’s really simple things that we can do that make a massive, massive difference. It’s just really simple questions. Okay, what did I do? Did that work? If so, why? And if not, why not? And how can I utilize that information to come up with a different plan tomorrow? Because essentially all sports psychology is, is about recreating the good and eliminating the bad. Is that what can we learn over time that tells us that some of the things that underpin our success and some of the things that get into get in the way. And then those, those things, those cues, those words, those focuses become part of the pre performance routine. And over time you develop Confidence in that being right for you, because the evidence shows that it is.

Nicky Lowe [00:33:11]:
I love that because as you, you’ve used that word so many times about evidence and those questions around what worked, what didn’t and why is almost getting rid of the unhelpful story or the unhelpful beliefs we might attach to something

Kate Hayes [00:33:23]:
to really get into the narrative becomes fact, doesn’t it? Story becomes fact very quickly if we don’t check it. And I remember one of the, the athletes, actually a middle distance runner that I interviewed as part of my PhD, and he talked about the Olympics was about the four years between the Olympics was paying into a confidence bank. So every training session, every pb, every technical development, every positive outcome, every successful race, all of it went into this confidence bank and it was written about in training diaries. And so you’re collecting evidence over time so that when you get into the Olympic Games and the training’s done, that’s when you make your withdrawal. But if there’s nothing in there, you’ve got nothing to withdraw. And it. I like that analogy and I think that’s a question that, that I would ask is what are you proactively doing to pay into a confidence bank so that when you need it, you’ve got something to withdraw. And it’s not something that people naturally and proactively go after.

Nicky Lowe [00:34:25]:
And I think particularly as women, because we’re told, don’t be arrogant, don’t get too big for your boots, don’t be. So it almost is like the more humble we are. So we don’t do that because, oh, that’s just like arrogant or. And actually when you go to. This is a process and it’s a really important process. And I’m wondering, as you were talking, I was thinking that I pride myself on being quite resilient. And one of the things that I think has fueled that is when I lost my mum and I often will pull on that even in professional contexts that aren’t. It’s not like I’ve banked it in that context, but I’ve banked it from other contexts to go, do you know what you’ve dealt with the worst that you could possibly have dealt with? So, like this, you can, you’ve got.

Nicky Lowe [00:35:11]:
So would it be right in saying it doesn’t have to be just in that context that you can bank it?

Kate Hayes [00:35:16]:
I think the, the skills or the personality characteristics or the things that you did to work through and navigate a traumatic time in your life, they are transferable to other contexts. So it’s unpicking. What was it that enabled you to work through that? And how can those. How can those same things be applied to different areas of your life? And that’s why I love listening to people’s stories. Like, when I get the opportunity to do purpose conversations with people and they take you through their life story, like, that’s when you start to see these things. Is that. Well, actually what you’re saying there is. Despite that being a really traumatic time, I’m seeing strength, I’m seeing motivation, I’m seeing commitment.

Kate Hayes [00:36:04]:
And where else or other times in life have those things been important? And there is definitely transferable skills, and there’s personality characteristics that we have that show up in multiple different environments. It’s been about then figuring out how do you apply those to the context that. That you’re in and what’s specific about that context that might need some additional thought.

Nicky Lowe [00:36:25]:
And what I would say is. And you’ve not paid me to say this because, you know, it’s so true, Kate, people need to get hold of your book because you share so many tools and strategies that you use with all of the elite performers you work with. Things like doing somebody’s lifeline, as you say, the highs and lows, and what can you draw on from that? So if people listening are going, I want more of this, I would really, really recommend you check out Kate’s book, How to Win, because you literally give us the playbook on how you do this. So you’ve shared some amazing stuff there. But if there was just one thing you want somebody to take away from listening to you talk about confidence, what would you want that to be?

Kate Hayes [00:37:05]:
I think the biggest takeaway is the myth that you’re either confident or you’re not. I think that that’s the most important part to this, is that confidence can absolutely be built and should be. And there are lots of really simple ways of doing that. But really being able to understand the how and the why of something as well as the what you want to achieve is where the magic lies. So people want to be successful. They want to hit the highest sales targets. They want to get a job interview. They want to pass an exam.

Kate Hayes [00:37:41]:
But in the moment, focusing on any one of those things isn’t useful. In order to be successful, people really need to understand how. And not just the. The knowledge and the experience, but the translation of being able to deliver that when it matters. That takes time and energy and. And it needs to be done proactively.

Nicky Lowe [00:38:06]:
Yeah, love that. And the intention behind that. So again, I would say get hold of your book because it really does talk people through some very, very practical things and also tells the stories about how you actually implement those in real life. So thank you, Kate, as always. I love talking to you.

Kate Hayes [00:38:26]:
Thank you, Nicky. Really lovely to talk to you.

Nicky Lowe [00:38:30]:
If you’ve 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 Group 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. Thanks for listening. Until next time, take care.