Kate Hays

Biography

Dr Kate Hays is Head of Women's Performance Psychology at the Football Association, where she works in the coaching team supporting the England Women's Football Team. She worked with the squad that won back-to-back European Championships and finished second at the World Cup. With two decades of working with Olympic teams, professional athletes and organisations at the highest levels, Kate has developed expertise in building mental resilience in high-pressure environments, enhancing team cohesion and collaboration, and creating strategies for sustained success.

Alongside her work with the England team, Kate's Olympic experience includes leading UK Sports Institute psychology strategy across the Rio and Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic cycles, and serving as Team GB HQ Psychologist at the Tokyo Games. She spent fourteen years working with British Diving and supported Olympic gold medallist Tom Daley. Elsewhere, her work in professional rugby includes serving as head psychologist with the Harlequins team that won the Premiership title, and as a consultant to the England women’s team during their successful Six Nations campaigns.

Kate defines her 'Building Blocks of Success', a framework she has developed throughout her time as a sport psychologist. It considers four connected questions: who we are, why we are here, how we play, and how we win, giving leaders and teams a common language for objectively examining their performance. From her work alongside world-leading athletes and coaches, including world and Olympic champions, she considers how to increase confidence to influence performance, develop winning strategies for teams and leaders, and build resilience. Kate also works extensively in business, including performance coaching with senior leaders, helping them examine how they lead, the environment they create and the choices that influence performance. From performing under pressure to building teams that work together, leading through change and uncertainty to creating a culture where people thrive, she considers the key elements to creating sustainable, repeatable success. Her approach focuses on accepting that whilst winning is important, it is more important to thrive and learn, and she demonstrates how good teams can become great teams.

The author of How to Win: Lessons in Success from the Front Line of Performance Psychology, Kate considers how to create a winning mentality in both individual and group settings. She applies this to business as well as to elite sport, showing how individuals and teams can build long-term, sustainable success through psychological exercises and challenges that can be applied in any environment, personal or professional. Her approachable, honest, practical style challenges conventional thinking on performance and helps people gain an understanding of themselves and of those working, playing, striving and living alongside them.