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.

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.

Pleasure to be on board.

Can you just talk to us a little bit about what is it like

competing at the World Championship of public speaking?

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.

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?

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.

How many times had you entered the contest before? I'm

just curious.

Well, I started competing in 2006.

Tell us a little bit about how did you develop the speech,

and when did you start to tell that story?

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.

What are some of the other were there any big lessons that

you learned in terms of, like, specific practical presentation

skills?

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.

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?

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.

Hmm, so last little question, you know, after you

win the world championship of public speaking, what's next?

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.

Dananjaya Hettiarachchi, thanks for being on the show.

Thank you very much.