Championship speaker and executive coach Dananjaya Hettiarachchi explains the difference between pull vs. push messages, which is better, and how to craft it.Hear Dananjaya's full interview in Episode 61 of The Action Catalyst.
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make it about the audience. I had a pull approach where the audience was getting pulled into my speech as opposed to me kind of thrusting down advice or pushing content down to them. 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 in my stories and in all of my speeches, I play the role of the middle. Then, then it is about the audience kind of coming into the speech. They're trying to experiment. They're trying to figure out who this guy is. It becomes more of like I need to dissect this individual in the speech.
I normally start off either as 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 will pull 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 coach message.