Podcast 2024 Audio
Balance ton héroïne · Géraldine Jakowski

Creating the conditions for everyone to perform

What does a leader do when half of a talent pool does not have the same chances of succeeding? On Balance ton héroïne, Géraldine Jakowski hosts Domitille Kiger, freefly world champion. Over the exchange, a very concrete lesson in leadership takes shape: a group's performance starts with the conditions you give it.

Published May 8, 2024 Hosted by Géraldine Jakowski Format audio Language French

Balance ton héroïne explores the paths of women. Domitille Kiger's runs through the highest world level of freefly, an artistic discipline where you fly in teams of three. But the episode quickly moves past the portrait: it shows a leader who, faced with an imbalance, chose to build a solution rather than note the problem. That is also what her keynote carries “De l'Audace”: performing together assumes you first create the conditions for performance.

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Balance ton héroïne · Domitille Kiger

Creating the frame that was missing

For a long time, in world records, Domitille saw women given fewer opportunities than men. They were sometimes judged in advance, suspected of cracking under pressure, and therefore kept out of the big attempts. Rather than accommodate that, she put herself into organizing women's world records: a frame where they could progress technically, build confidence, then go back to performing in mixed contexts. The leadership lesson is clear and transferable: you do not get a group's performance by excluding people on assumptions, but by building the conditions where everyone can show what they are worth.

Taking a collective to afeat, under pressure

What she puts forward most in keynotes is those large formation records: bringing a group together and taking it to a demanding feat achieved together, in a tense environment. Leading, here, is not pushing harder, it is orchestrating. Supervising, training, coordinating, so that at the decisive moment everyone holds their role. The result is never the work of one individual, it is that of a prepared collective.

Putting risk on the scale

The podcast title lands well, because Domitille weighs things. She refuses the race for intensity and owns a clear calculation: when she puts on the scale what skydiving gives her, this life, this freedom, this career, against a moderate statistical risk, it is worth it. BASE jumping, where the danger becomes vital, does not pass the same test. That is exactly the mechanism of “De l'Audace”: telling the risks that destroy from the risks that propel, and taking on only the second kind.

A frame where they could progress and build confidence was missing. So she created it.
What your teams take from it
  • Conditions created so that everyone progresses, rather than exclusions based on assumptions.
  • Confidence that gets built in a protected frame, before performing on demanding ground.
  • A collective taken to a feat under pressure, with no race for intensity.
  • A relationship to risk that is owned: knowing what is worth it, and what is not.
What does Domitille Kiger talk about on Balance ton héroïne?
Her path as a freefly world champion, the creation of the women's world records to give women a frame where they could progress, how she takes a collective to a feat under pressure, and her clear eyed relationship to risk.
Why did she create women's world records?
Because women had fewer opportunities and were sometimes excluded on assumptions. She built a frame where they could train, progress and build confidence, before performing in mixed contexts. An approach to inclusive leadership that transfers to any organization.
How does it connect to the keynote De l'Audace?
Creating the conditions for a collective's performance, and telling the risks that destroy from the risks that propel: these are two pillars of what Domitille develops on stage, in order to perform together.
Let's get to work

De l'Audace

Performing together by telling the risks that destroy from the risks that propel.