Page 5 - TPA Journal January February 2024

The Evolution of Leadership in the 21st Century

Flow and Koherence to Peak Group Performance and

Well Being

by Zoltan Papp, Co-founder Ko Center Co

Flow is a state where a person is fully immersed, fully focused, fully involved and fully enjoy-
ing the activity they are doing. In Flow the individual has low stress, high happiness and is per-
forming at their peak. There is a sense of loss of time and ease in doing the activity. Some call
it being in the “zone” or a feeling of “floating” why the term “Flow” was used to describe the
state.

Flow research began in the 1970s through the work of Professor Mihaly Csikszentmihályi who
was a co-founder of Positive Psychology. His work initially identified the following six factors of
Flow: (1) intense focused concentration on the present moment; (2) merging action and aware-
ness; (3) loss of reflective self-consciousness; (4) sense of control over the situation or activity;
(5) loss of the sense of time; and (6) intrinsic reward of the experience of the activity. Nakamura
J, Csikszentmihályi M (20 December 2001), “Flow Theory and Research”.

The Flow state was identified to be most likely achieved when the activity was being done for
intrinsic purposes, rather for an extrinsic reward, and when the person’s skills matched the chal-
lenges of the situation or activity. The Flow model shows that increasing skills while the chal-
lenge is increased achieves the Flow state resulting in optimal peak performance.
Group Flow is independent of a synchronized state of solitary individual Flow in a group. Group

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