Untitled on Leadership: Forget Perfection, Embrace Your Flaws, and Be Your Best

How do you get the best out of people? What does it take to make a team thrive? From the head coach of the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team and legendary coach of Chelsea FC comes a book of hard-won lessons for leading a team to success, on and off the field.

＂In soccer, we are at a tipping point of generational change. More leaders are showing their humanity because they must meet modern managerial expectations. If you are not a people person, an empathetic manager, you will eventually be spat out of the system. Lasting success is built on teamwork.＂ - Emma Hayes

Few places will test your leadership skills more than the global soccer stage. As the head coach for the U.S. Women’s National Team and former longtime coach of Chelsea FC Women with 14 major trophies under her belt, Emma Hayes has dealt with it all: making split-second strategy decisions with millions of people watching, rallying her team with only four minutes in the locker room to turn a sure-loss into a sure-win, and intensively managing the care and training of her players so they perform at their best. How does she do that? By leading with care, empathy, and respect for the people on the field.

Available for the first time in print, A Completely Different Game is an updated and expanded reinvention of Hayes’s Audible Original Kill the Unicorn. Here, Hayes shares her boots-on-the-ground approach for leading any team to success. Beginning with her upbringing in Camden, working with her father at the Jubilee Market Hall in Covent Garden and playing on her first soccer team, to her move across the Atlantic to one of the biggest soccer teams in the world, Hayes recounts all the hard-won lessons in between, such as:

• Why knowing your team members - and what makes them tick - is crucial to managing effectively.
• How your organizational values become decision-making tools, and how to unite your team around them, too.
• What motherhood taught Hayes about leadership, and how she became more impactful as a coach as a result.
• How to leverage your position as a force for good, drawing on Hayes’s work to further women’s healthcare in sports, as well as her own health issues.

Whether you’re in the locker room, in the boardroom, or in a cubicle, teamwork is the bedrock of success. This book will help you lead with heart, strength, and authenticity, no matter what challenge you’re facing.

Emma Hayes is the new head coach of the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team. She was the long-time head coach for Chelsea FC, one of the most successful women’s teams in Europe. She led Chelsea FC to two domestic league and cup doubles, and one trophy treble since taking over the team in 2012. Born in London, Hayes previously coached in the United States with the Long Island Lady Riders and Iona College. In 2006, Hayes served as assistant first team coach at Arsenal Ladies where they achieved huge success, winning 11 major trophies over three-seasons. She then joined the Chicago Red Stars in the inaugural year of the Women’s Professional Soccer league in 2008, and also served as technical director of the New York Flash in WPS. Hayes was appointed manager of Chelsea Ladies in June 2012 and three years later, successfully led them to the Women’s FA Cup for the first time. The team also went on to gain the Women’s Super League title to complete a historic and memorable double. In June 2016, Hayes was made an MBE in the Queen’s 90th birthday honours list. She was appointed OBE in the 2022 New Year Honours and named The Best FIFA Women’s Coach at The Best FIFA Awards in 2023.