Emma Hayes

Why organisations work with Emma Hayes

• She has built two elite teams from different starting points: a Chelsea side she took from mid-table to seven Women’s Super League titles, and a US national team she led to Olympic gold within ten matches of taking charge.
• Her leadership thesis is published and tested. A Completely Different Game sets out a working method built around team, staff and standards, not personality.
• She speaks from a current operational seat, not a retired one. Buyers get a working head coach describing live decisions under pressure, not retrospective career narrative.
• Named The Best FIFA Women’s Coach (2021) and winner of the inaugural Johan Cruyff Trophy (2024); the formal recognition tracks the operational record.
• She is fluent in the language of senior business audiences from regular broadcast and conference work, including Sky and BBC punditry and the Leaders in Sport platform.

Biography highlights

• Head Coach, United States Women’s National Team, 2024 to present.
• Manager, Chelsea FC Women, 2012 to 2024; seven WSL titles, five FA Cups, five domestic doubles.
• Olympic gold medal with the USWNT, Paris 2024.
• The Best FIFA Women’s Coach, 2021; inaugural Johan Cruyff Trophy, 2024.
• OBE (2022) and MBE (2016) for services to football.
• Author, A Completely Different Game: My Leadership Playbook (2024), expanded from the Audible Original Kill the Unicorn.

Biography

Chelsea FC Women were a mid-table side in 2012. By the time Emma Hayes left in 2024, they had won seven Women’s Super League titles, including five in a row, alongside five FA Cups and multiple League Cups. The rebuild was not the result of a single tactical idea. It was the product of how she organised the staff around her, the standards she held, and the way she handled players, ownership and scrutiny over twelve seasons.

The work translated directly. Appointed Head Coach of the United States Women’s National Team in 2024, she led the side to Olympic gold in Paris in her tenth match in charge, winning every knockout game 1-0. The body of evidence sits across two contexts, club and country, with very different constraints. The leadership method travelled.

Her book, A Completely Different Game: My Leadership Playbook, sets out the underlying argument. Published in 2024 as the print expansion of the Audible Original Kill the Unicorn, written with Michael Calvin, it dismantles the idea of the lone great leader. Sustained performance, she argues, is built by the staff around the leader and the culture the leader is willing to enforce. The book is grounded in operational practice, not theory.

Formal recognition has followed the record. She was named The Best FIFA Women’s Coach in 2021, won the inaugural Johan Cruyff Trophy for the best women’s coach in the world in 2024, and was appointed OBE in 2022 after an MBE in 2016. She continues to coach at the top of the international game, which is what gives her speaking work its weight: the material is live, not retrospective.

Key speaking topics

• Building high-performance teams
• Leadership through sustained change
• Culture and standards in elite organisations
• Decision-making under pressure
• Women in leadership
• Coaching as a leadership discipline

Ideal for

• CEOs, COOs and executive teams rebuilding performance after underperformance or restructure
• CHROs and chief people officers working on leadership development and high-performance culture
• Boards and senior leadership offsites focused on standards, accountability and team design

Audience outcomes

• A working model for how senior leaders set and hold standards through cycles of pressure
• A clear view of how culture is built deliberately, not absorbed by accident
• Concrete examples of decisions made under scrutiny, with the trade-offs named
• A reframing of leadership away from individual heroics towards staff, team and system design