Marc Verillotte

Conference titled "how to maintain our skills under pressure", the experience of RAID and high-level judo. A motivational, instructive, and spectacular conference.

My conference is titled "how to maintain our skills under pressure - The experience of high-level sports and RAID". It is an inspiring, joyful, dynamic, and instructive conference on the theme of commitment and optimizing our mental skills to remain competent under pressure. My conference is based on the principle that even though all stresses are different, even though all stakes are different... the internal mechanism of stress is identical, whether it is sports-related, war-related, academic, personal... or corporate. Regardless of their profession, when a person loses their self-confidence, for example, they will use the same tricks as another person to remedy it. The same applies to all other mental skills. This conference synthesizes my experience as an international judo competitor, national coach of police judo, member of the RAID assault unit, and speaker in the corporate world since 2018. I was part of the French judo team for 5 years, from 1990 to 1995, and notably won the Paris tournaments in 1990 and Los Angeles in 1993. I won the European Champions Cup with the Racing Club de France in 1993. I was the national coach of police judo, and I hold a 6th dan black belt. I spent 20 years in the RAID assault unit, the elite intervention unit of the national police from 1998 to 2018. I participated in several hundred arrests and interventions: an assault operator typically conducts about 50 interventions per year. I took part in many emblematic operations of the Unit, including the Colonna case, Charlie Hebdo, the release of 26 hostages from the hyper cacher at the Porte de Vincennes, the assaults on November 13, 2015, and that of Saint Denis on November 18, during the Merah case in Toulouse in March 2012, where the terrorist shot me twice, once in the shoulder and once in the helmet, and I was awarded the Legion of Honor for acts of arms. I joined the RAID assault unit at the age of 33, when my physical abilities were at their peak as I was just finishing my judo career in the French team. I left this unit 20 years later at the age of 53. My physical abilities had obviously declined, compensated by my technical skills that I had honed and by my mental skills that I had developed. It is this experience that I convey during my conference. I am a hands-on person, and I designed this conference with the aim of delivering a concrete message so that my audience leaves with immediately usable tools in their professional and personal lives. During this conference, I will guide your attention to more than 20 points such as: - How to reactivate our confidence. - How to choose our thoughts as we choose our clothes in the morning. - How to build "shield thoughts" to dodge our inappropriate thoughts. - How to manage change and uncertainty and thus be more agile. - How to manage our vigilance to position ourselves at will in our optimum activation zone. - How to compartmentalize our professional life from our private life. - What to focus on at the beginning of an action. - How to benefit from the strengths of the collective. - How to physically and mentally relax despite the pressure. - How to control our emotions. ... These tools have served me in RAID as well as in the French judo team, and they can serve in all other fields... including of course the corporate field. I have already had the opportunity to give conferences for companies such as Société Générale, Andros, Orano, SOCFIM, CEA, Autoroutes-trafic, ACLH lawyers, EDF, PSG, Paris Airport, Danone, Safran, BNP Paribas, BNI national and Anjou Poitou, CNOSF, Simon-Kucher, Union des Mousquetaires, a+énergie, Databricks, Salesforce, Banque de France, APREH, Gestinnov, Leroy Merlin, CEJICAM, Harmonie Mutuelle, ELIOR... I have participated in two TEDx talks "managing your stress: the RAID experience" and "RAID: facing the unpredictable".