Flow Conference 2022 – Interview with Event Team Member Derek Tate
The Positive Psychology Guild is proud to partner with this year’s Flow Conference event. The Flow Conference is a two-day virtual event on 31st August & 1st September 2022. The conference consists of over 30 presenters – scientists, practitioners and professionals – covering a range of fascinating talks, practical advice, and cutting-edge ideas on how to stress less and be more. There will be presentations, live workshops, panel discussions, Q&A sessions and open community chats. Our founder Reece Coker will be delivering a presentation on Special Interests and Autism: Accessing Flow, and one of our PPG members, Derek Tate, a Positive Psychology Practitioner, author, flow coach and alpine ski teacher, is part of the event team. The guest entry below is a short interview with Derek and his relationship with flow.
Can you give us a brief introduction to yourself and how flow shows up in your life?
My name is Derek Tate and for over 35 years I have been involved in snowsports as an instructor, coach examiner of ski instructors and importantly as a keen skier. Not surprisingly skiing is one of my big flow activities as it provides a fantastic challenge and is so enjoyable. I started researching flow during the MSc Applied Positive Psychology at Bucks New University and this has led me down an exciting path where, through collaboration with others, I am involved with organizing the Flow Conference.
How do you incorporate flow into your work with clients/organisations, and in what ways is this an important aspect of your practice?
When I’m teaching skiing ‘psychological aspects’ are a massive part of my client’s needs and the desired outcome is to facilitate a ‘flow state’ for them. So, in reality, I always incorporate appropriate teaching tools and flow foundations to increase the likelihood of flow taking place. I also run specific ‘find your flow’ performance days for those that want to know more about this psychological state and how they can more easily find it during their own practice time.
Can you give us a brief description of your role at the flow conference?
My role at the conference is ‘event manager’ so there is a massive amount to do in the build-up to the event especially as this is the first edition of what will be an annual event. During the conference itself my role will be to ensure that everything runs smoothly so I will be handling a lot of the background tasks during live sessions on Zoom e.g. managing the chat, hosting, running polls etc. We will be broadcasting the conference from a beautiful location called Brooklands which is in the small town of Arundel in the south of England.
Where is the future for flow? In what ways do you think research and practice can be developed in new areas?
In one sense ‘flow’ is very well known but it is not a term that the public readily understands. So, there needs to be a lot more education about what the ‘construct’ is all about and how it can be practically applied by coaches across many different domains. The Flow Conference will really show just how important flow is across so many areas of life. As a psychological construct research is still in its infancy and most research to date has been on what would be termed solo flow – flow experienced by the individual. Hence I believe that one of the areas that will be researched more is team or collective flow in many areas including music, sport and business.
Derek Tate
Derek is a positive psychology practitioner, author, flow coach and alpine ski teacher. He has spent the last 34 years teaching skiing to people of all ages and abilities. He has worked for a number of organisations and national governing bodies/organisations training and examining ski instructors. In addition he has helped to structure and develop educational pathways and learning resources for these organisations. Derek has always been passionate about the psychology of learning, and writes regularly on flow. Derek is the owner of the Parallel Dreams Coaching Academy.