I See Something, with Dananjaya Hettiarachchi – Episode 61 of The Action Catalyst Podcast

Championship speaker and executive coach Dananjaya Hettiarachchi shares the two principles behind crafting a great message, the three biggest things he changed to create a championship speech, pull vs. push messages, the two types of stories that exist, the power of connecting with failure, and why sometimes just being yourself is the hardest part.

About Dananjaya:

Dananjaya is a leading expert in influence, leadership communication, and Peak Performance. He works with leaders and professionals as an executive coach to convert their vision into powerful messages and influence strategies that inspire performance.”

Starting his professional career as a human resource development specialist, Dananjaya has invested over 15 years of his life towards understanding and studying how we learn new skills, traits, and attributes to succeed in our lives, as well as in our organizations.

Putting his knowledge to practice, Dananjaya embarked on a journey to learn the art and science of public speaking and influence. In 2014, he won the Toastmasters International World Championship of public speaking, surpassing over 30,000 contestants worldwide.

His world championship speech has been translated into 18 languages and is taken as a specimen of study for leadership communication across the world by leading educational institutions and universities.

Today, Dananjaya combines his in-depth knowledge in Adult Learning, Leadership Communication, and self-mastery to help global leaders and professionals expand their sphere of influence.

Learn more at ISeeSomethingInYou.com.

The Action Catalyst is presented by the Southwestern Family of Companies. With each episode, the podcast features some of the nation’s top thought leaders and experts, sharing meaningful tips and advice. Learn more at TheActionCatalyst.com, subscribe below or wherever you listen to podcasts, and be sure to leave a rating and review!

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(Transcribed using A.I. / May include errors):

Host
He is the 2014 World Champion of Public Speaking for Toastmasters International, Dananjaya Hettiarachchi. He is awesome. He’s a TEDx speaker and is among a handful of human resource development consultants in the Asia Pacific region that specializes in performance prediction. Dananjaya, thank you for being with us.

Dananjaya Hettiarachchi
Pleasure to be on board.

Host
Can you just talk to us a little bit about what is it like competing at the World Championship of public speaking?

Dananjaya Hettiarachchi
It’s an amazing experience, because I come from South Asia, so for us, stepping onto that stage is massive, because, you know, English is our third language, it’s been a dream come true.

Host
That’s awesome. And I want to apologize, it’s going to be a little fuzzy, because Dananjaya is in Sri Lanka, and so we’re catching him on Skype. So let me ask you this question, what do you think is the hardest part of being in the contest?

Dananjaya Hettiarachchi
I think the hardest part for me throughout the years was being comfortable with who I am. For a long time, I wanted to emulate speakers from the West because I thought that was the way to win the world championship. But for me, I actually discovered my, you know, moment of glory when I decided to stop competing and just start being myself. And that was the hardest part. I think it took me 10 years just to be myself on stage.

Host
How many times had you entered the contest before? I’m just curious.

Dananjaya Hettiarachchi
Well, I started competing in 2006.

Host
Tell us a little bit about how did you develop the speech, and when did you start to tell that story?

Dananjaya Hettiarachchi
Okay, the first cut of the speech, I did it at TEDx speech. Now, what I wanted to give to the audience was, well, there are some people in life that can’t figure out what they’re good at finding themselves. So if you look at my life, I think every achievement that I’ve achieved in my adult life has been because of the influence of others. And whenever I wanted to give up, they do step in and made me not make that decision. When you associate the right people, you can achieve great things in life. I did this speech in schools. I did it for children, but a great response. So I wanted to make this into a five, seven minute speech. It took me a year to do that. The challenge is complicated more because in this part of the world, we speak generally faster and the West we seek at about 160 165 words per minute. It just complicated even more, it’s not just about cutting back, it’s about also slowing down. You have to really pick the most impactful sentences words, because you need to not only cut back, but you gotta take more time. You know, a lot of speakers start this speech with a title or a topic. I always start with my message. And what I do that I take a lot of time on the message. Once I got my message down, I have two principles. A, it has to be simple. B, it has to be inspirational. So until I get that phrase why I don’t concentrate about anything else, I just concentrate about what’s my short and inspirational message. And then what I do is I start to layer that message with stories that I feel really add value to that message. And then it’s about building upwards from that method. So that’s the process I actually take.

Host
What are some of the other were there any big lessons that you learned in terms of, like, specific practical presentation skills?

Dananjaya Hettiarachchi
I think there were three major lessons that I’ve learned. The first is, I wasn’t a very big fan of repetition. I consciously try to position my message my key first at least three times within the speech. So I say once, I say twice, and the third time before I say it, the audience is finished saying so I actively get the audience’s some constant involvement into my speech. Number two, I wasn’t a heavy fan of props. I never liked to use props on my speech, but I used props and then for me, that enhanced my speech. It gave my speech a more visual and kinesthetic element that really enhanced what I was actually saying. Third thing that I learned, make it about the audience. I had a pool approach, where the audience was getting pulled into my speech, as opposed to me, kind of trusting down advice or, you know, pushing content down to them. So those are three things that I learned.

Host
So repetition, props and allowing for a pull message instead of a push message. How do you create a pull message instead of a push message?

Dananjaya Hettiarachchi
What I normally do is, it has to do with how you construct the story. Now, there are two types of stories, right? A is where you become the hero of your story, where you’re the hero of the story throughout, generally, when you’re the hero of your story throughout, it becomes a push message. But what I like to do with my stories, and in all of my speeches, I play the role of the Miller then, then it is about the audience kind of coming into the speech that I experiment, that kind of figure out who this guy is. And it becomes more of like I need to dissect this individual in this team, I normally start off either the anti hero or the failure in the speech, because, as I always say, people connect in failure more than in success. I take some time to explore failure. I make sure that I connect with my audience through my failures, and that really pulls the audience to me. But if I become the hero of my speech from the very beginning, what happens is, then it’s about, okay, I’ve done something really great, and you guys need to now listen to me go and do this. And that then becomes a push message.

Host
Hmm, so last little question, you know, after you win the world championship of public speaking, what’s next?

Dananjaya Hettiarachchi
Well, so my Toastmaster career has now ended. Now my next, next thing is to just be a motivational speaker and an inspirational speaker for this part of the world, and I’ve got to now unlearn being a world champion and learn again how to, you know, start from scratch and being a paid motivational, inspirational speaker, and make this into a business model full of success. So I’m back to square one. I’m learning again, and I’m looking to achieve my goal in the next 10 years.

Host
Dananjaya Hettiarachchi, thanks for being on the show.

Dananjaya Hettiarachchi
Thank you very much.