The podcast title already says the essential. A bet is not a stroke of luck: it is a risk you take on because you weighed it. That is exactly how Domitille Kiger talks about risk, with more than nine thousand jumps behind her. You do not succeed without daring, but daring is not enough to succeed. Between the two, there is a discipline: the one that tells the risks that destroy from the risks that propel, at the heart of her keynote “De l'Audace”.
Pari gagnant #23 · Domitille Kiger
Pari gagnant, risk looked at as a bet
On her podcast, Mathilde Bécourt approaches risk as a bet, an angle that runs straight into Domitille's thesis. Freefly world champion and organizer of large formation records, she came to look back from the world of sport toward the corporate world: risk management, team dynamics, leading by example, mental preparation. All subjects she now carries over into keynotes and coaching.
Her first conviction is sharp: taking risks is necessary to succeed, but no risk guarantees success. There is an instinctive, almost reptilian part in the moment of acting. What remains is knowing whether you are betting or flipping a coin.
Taking a risk is not betting blind
The difference lies entirely in the preparation. The risk she takes on in flight is nothing like an impulse: it is framed, rehearsed, made safe. The equipment, the procedures, an automatic activation device that opens the reserve canopy if nothing has been done, all of it is there to clear away what could destroy. What remains is useful daring: attempting a more ambitious figure, an unprecedented sequence, a larger organization.
That is the very mechanism of her keynote. A team that wins is neither the one that avoids all risk, nor the one that bets blind. It is the one that has learned to sort: giving up fatal risks without discussion, and taking on clear eyed the ones that move things forward.
Selecting and preparing the team, not only technically
For a record, she says, the secret lies first in the team: hand picked, or built over selection and training camps across a year or two. But training is not only technical. The real subject, the one that fascinates her, is enabling a group to accomplish something very difficult together in a short window: giving it the mental means and the confidence that make the objective reachable. That is the parallel with business that she carries into keynotes.
That commitment to the collective has a concrete follow up: Joyriders, one of the first women's collectives she set up, to set records while making the discipline accessible to women. A way of recalling that a group's performance is decided first in how it is put together and in what it is given in order to dare.
Leading by example: owning your mistake
She tells an episode that mattered. Early in her professional practice, an error of trajectory on her part caused a collision in freefall. The person hit got out of it thanks to their automatic activation device. The mistake cost her team a major competition that year.
What she takes from it goes beyond the incident. Owning a mistake when you are in a leadership position marks people far more than covering it up. It has become a story she passes on, and a principle of leading by example: a leader's credibility is also built on the ability to own what did not work.
- A grown up risk culture, one that tells the calculated bet from the roll of the dice and only dares what moves things forward.
- More credible leaders, because they own their mistakes instead of covering them up.
- A team selected and prepared mentally as much as technically.
- Mental preparation that turns apprehension into clarity at the moment of deciding.
This episode illustrates one of the five topics of the “De l'Audace” keynote: Risk taking in business →