A different way of leading begins with a different relationship to yourself.
about me
Ashleigh Hayden, PCC | Leadership & Behavioural Coach
I work with leaders who are already doing the work, often in environments that are complex, politicised and emotionally demanding. Many of my clients are the people that step in when things get hard. They make difficult decisions, shelfter others from pressure and carry responsibility that is rarely visible. They are thoughtful, capable and conscientious.
My role is to help these leaders understand of what may be driving their behavioural preferences under pressure – emotionally, relationally or operationally – so that they can respond with clarity and authority rather than urgency and endurance. The people I work with do not need motivation, mindset reframes or performance hacks. They need a pause from the noise where they can explicitly name the dynamics of their role: pressure, responsibility, loyalty, avoidance and risk. Together we can turn this, often unspoken and abstract intuition, emotion, competing demand and informal power, into practical choices, clear decisions and systems that enable adaptability under pressure.
My role is to create enough space between the pressure and the response for a leader to identify what is more helpful and sustainable for them and the systems they’ve built.
my background
My professional life began in financial services, in environments where accuracy, confidentiality and commercial impact matter. I learned what it means to operate in high stakes systems with small margins for error and an unspoken expectation of endurance. Ultimately, two decades in this industry led me to burnout.
In 2020 I retrained as a Behavioural Coach specialising in stress management. Since then, I’ve partnered with C-suite leaders in huge organisations and senior teams across various sectors: hedge funds, professional services, tech, and SMEs, helping them to navigate complex interpersonal dynamics, high-stakes decisions and the emotional labour of leadership.
Over the last few years I have gradually tailored my approach to serve founder-led and family-run businesses, many of them relationship-driven and built on trust rather than a formal structure. Here I’ve seen close up how pressure can curtail passion, how legacy and loyalty shapes decisions, and how often leaders quietly override their own limits in service of “doing the right thing”. Over time, I have become less interested in surface-level performance and far more interested in what was happening beneath: the identity, thought patterns, emotional experiences and systems driving behaviour that determine how a leader tackles their day, particularly under pressure.
A consistent thread in my work is translating what feels intangible: pressure, control, intution, values, responsibility – into something leaders can actually use: language, structure, choices and behavioural experiments that impact in real-time.
my credentials
I am an ICF Professional Certified Coach (PCC) with extensive experience supporting leaders and teams in complex, high-responsibility roles. My training and credentials include:
ICF PCC (Professional Certified Coach): advanced coaching accreditation with a strong ethical, reflective practice and robust psychological education.
Certified DiSC practitioner: behavioural insight to support self-awareness, communication and leadership dynamics under pressure
Certified ResilienceBuilder facilitator: data-led insight into stress, capacity and resilience patterns
Specialist training in stress management and burnout prevention, with a particular focus on the point before collapse: awareness, permission and choice
Background in neuroscience and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT): shaping how I work with thoughts, emotions, values and behaviour in practical, non-clinical ways
I design and deliver specialised coaching in the form of Reset Days and longer-term partnerships for a small number of private clients. This work is intentionally contained, not scaled. The patterns that shape leaders under pressure are contextual, cultural and often invisible. I don’t run people through programmes or formulas. I offer a structure that supports courageous conversations about how you lead, what it costs, and what needs to change. I am not the right coach if you want quick fixes. I am the right coach if you want grounded and ethical support translated into practical, actionable strategy.
I work with a small number of leaders on a one-to-one or small-team basis to ensure depth, discretion, and real impact. This work is deliberately contained – not scaled – because the patterns that shape a leader under pressure are cultural, contextual, and often invisible in group or generic settings. My primary service is a private, in-person Reset Day. These days are focused working sessions designed to create the space to step out of urgency, examine how decisions and responsibility are currently operating, particularly under pressure, and reset the patterns that the business depends on. They are designed for leaders who recognise that their current way of operating has reached its limit – emotionally, relationally or operationally.