« We can siesta when we’re dead » (first impressions on the Pre-RM workshop)

Context: We arrived two days ago, safely for the most part (« for the most part », i.e. William was taken hostage for 8 hours in Sao Paulo and reached us only around midnight). We are anything but rested, yet thoroughly amazed by the sheer fact that the Southern Hemisphere is bathed in summer. There are greens here, so much greens ! (and I am NOT alluding to the fact Uruguay has legalized marijuana). And amongst the sunlight and the perfume of Ceibo flowers, the refreshing Dulce de Leche ice creams and salty ocean air, there stands the SMU (« Sindicato Médico del Uruguay »; the labor union office of doctors), a large tungsten-lit conference hall where, locked away from the vitality and grace of tropical nature, 60 or so med students have been sequestered for the course of a Pre-Regional Meeting training.

The SMU has become our habitat. From almost dawn to almost dusk, it operates as a Pre-RM bootcamp, covering topics such as public health, global health within exchanges, maternal health and safe abortions, and concrete capacity building trainings such as TNT (Training New Trainers), TOT (Trainer Old Trainers), and finally, LEAD (Leadership, External Rep, Advocacy). Being somewhat familiar with the aforementioned fields, I picked the option that wouldn’t prove the most informative per se, but the most pragmatic. Considering the mandates and responsibilities I have to meet this year and (fingers crossed) in the future, as you’ve guessed, I picked the LEAD workshop. The training is given by an all-star team of IFMSA leaders such as Ignacia Alvarez (regional director of the Americas), Ileas Ortega (ex-regional coordinator for the Americas) and Karim Abu Zied (president of IFMSA). And working alongside IFMSA-Quebec’s president David Galiano, I’m not sure why this workshop wasn’t named more appropriately “the White House workshop”.

So what are the perks of being in LEAD so far ? Great energizers, yes; notorious punishments for being late after breaks (so please ignore any videos of me that are circulating these days), unfortunately so; dedicated trainers, absolutely; time for la siesta.. they’re working on it. Mostly, we develop critical thinking and skills to empower our leadership and the implementation of strategic planning, public speaking, advocacy on IFMSA issues, and the occasional advertising of unicorn meat and thongs for babies (true story). Through the training, we also have to set the stage for what they call our “enterprise”, an IFMSA initiative we will implement in the 6 months following the Regional Meeting. I will give a more specific update on this topic in the next blog post, but for now I’ll just offer a few words on a highlight of this workshop: motivational skills.

What this workshop has not only taught eloquently but demonstrated quite efficiently so far: the best translation from theory to practice starts with emotional appeal, i.e. contagious behaviour and motivation. Motivation has been defined in many ways, the simplest of which may be “the effort someone is willing to put in a a task or a goal”. I would like to suggest motivation is also an active engagement between our faculty for attention and a targeted object/content. Notice how we « give » our attention (and sometimes even « pay » for it), and how a good speaker will « capture » its audience’s attention. Now, to answer how to motivate someone, you might as well ask: how do you generate this “will” to invest effort, or how do you capture someone’s attention ?

As was explained in Simon Sinek’s video about the Golden Circle concept (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5Tw0PGcyN0), most people end up attempting to recruit or convince people (i.e. motivate an action) by investing on rational arguments, such as “what” a product is (this is the finest watch!) and “how” it is made (by the finest swiss designers!). But most of the time, the “why” aspect is neglected, and yet this is the most emotionally appealing attribute of a product or a project. To “pay” attention, there must be a personal partaking in the item or issue at hand. Why are you in IFMSA ? Why should others join your team, or contribute to your projects ? Motivation won’t kick off, or is doomed to be short-lived unless you can tap into what is often referred to as “the emotional centers of our brain”, the limbic system (for anyone interested in a more rigorous, non over-simplified explanation of this, I highly recommend reading from Jaak Panksepp or Joseph Ledoux). This is the idea Daniel Goleman’s highly successful career in entrepreneurship was built upon (see his books on “emotional intelligence”, and just about a million of derivative literature): we are wired to respond emotionally to information content and, very much unconsciously (and consciously also) are influenced by patterns as habitual and unnoticed as the air we breathe. Thus in short, a successful project (say, a local officer’s plan to form a committee to advocate against the ill-effects of sugar consumption), such a project wins from building on emotional triggers, or « motivators ». Amongst committee members, those can be opportunities and benefits, personal interest in the cause, a desire to improve their CV, or even a vendetta against the sugar industry and the diabetes epidemic in the Americas. “Why should this project matter to you ?” And as regards the industry, policy makers, supporters or opponents, the emotional triggers can be in more subtle, especially in face to face interactions: having a warm approach, a confident tone of voice, efficient hand gestures; communicating content that easy to comprehend and identify with; prepping the audience for the “foreign” material and making the content more fun, or well illustrated; bridging the distance between your world view and theirs through personal stories and anecdotes… all are ways to appeal emotionally to the world out there. To motivate someone, you need to “move” them first. This knowledge is as old as it is neglected. Why would someone put effort and support projects you, yourself, have been motivated to do in the first place ? This is an important question to which we have been exposed through the LEAD workshop. Now, the challenge will be to find what answers come up in the many step of our journey through IFMSA as we thrive to become global health leaders with a sustainable, socially responsible impact on the health of the generations to come.

Ugh, so much writing, and so little sleep ! I am off to conclude this second day at the Pre-RM training. As William just said, “we can siesta when we’re dead” 😉

charles.antoine