Flow is that instant of intense focus where you are entirely in the moment. In skydiving, says Domitille Kiger, you drop into it almost automatically the moment you leave the aircraft. But the subject becomes far more interesting to an organization when it stops being individual: how do you get a whole team to enter it at the same time? That is the question that meets her keynote “De l'Audace” and its promise of performing together.
Pêchu · Domitille Kiger
Flow, focus in the moment
For Domitille, flow is nothing mysterious: it is intense focus on the present. In freefall it almost imposes itself, whether you are in competition, on a record or on a training jump. What makes the episode interesting is what she does with it next: that state so sought after in business, she lives daily, and she knows what triggers it.
Turning stress into good pressure
Flow does not fall from the sky, it gets prepared. Mental preparation does not target flow directly, but it leads there. Domitille describes a world final fought neck and neck, where the stress was enormous. Rather than endure it, she chose to use it, reminding herself that this stress pushes her toward her best instead of making her lose her means. Good pressure, the kind that stimulates, can be worked on.
Collective flow, the condition of victory
This is where the episode becomes valuable to any organization. That world title, she won as a team, after five years spent flying together. What worried her before the competition was not technique, it was a possible lack of cohesion, because being sufficiently together is a condition without which you do not win. The answer came from a simple ritual: a gesture, an anchor repeated before each jump, that connected the team and put it in the same mental projection.
Getting everyone's best, in the same minute
What she now passes on in keynotes comes from there, but at a larger scale. Organizing a record means bringing together dozens, sometimes two hundred people, and letting each of them give their best in the same minute, in a tense context. Collective flow is then no longer luck, it is the product of preparation, cohesion and leadership that create the conditions for everyone to enter it together.
- A shared state of focus where the team enters performance together.
- Stress turned into useful energy, rather than into a brake.
- Simple rituals that connect a collective right before the effort.
- Cohesion lived as a condition of success, not as a comfort.
This episode illustrates one of the five topics of the “De l'Audace” keynote: Team cohesion and high performance →