The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: I See Something, with Dananjaya Hettiarachchi (Speaking, Storytelling, Success, Personal Development)
Tue, 31 Dec 2024
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.
Full Episode
There are two types of stories, right? A is where you become the hero. But what I like to do in my stories and in all of my speeches, I play the role of the villain, the anti-hero, or the failure in the speech. People connect in failure more than in success.
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He is the 2014 World Champion of Public Speaking for Toastmasters International. Dhananjaya Hedyarachi. 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. Dhananjaya, thank you for being with us. It's a 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. It's huge. Because when I come from English, it's our third language. It's a dream come true.
That's awesome. And I want to apologize. It's going to be a little fuzzy because Dhananjaya 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 specifically?
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 that was the way to win the world championship. But for me, I actually discovered my 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.
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