Dananjaya J Hettiarachchi tells ANGElA PAlJOR about what it takes to make a career in public speaking
What made you choose public speaking as a careerIJ
When I was in my teens, my dad introduced me to Toastmaster, a worldwide organisation that helps you develop leadership and speaking skills. I became a part of it and met a lot of great people who saw my ability to deliver something in front of a crowd. What happened next was speaking and doing more training than doing a job behind a desk. So, there was a natural progression into speaking.
What would you advise to a young aspiring speakerIJ
I think a good speaker should have three elements. First is integrity which a lot of speakers miss out. What you say is something you should practice because credibility is tied to integrity. If you don’t practice what you preach, there is a very good chance that people will not listen to you again. Second is empathy, because unless you’re empathetic, you cannot relate to the audience. Finally, you’ve got to have a message, something they want the audience to feel or think.
How does one use the stage effectively so that the movements compliment the speechIJ
Speakers have a rule — don’t move if you don’t have to. If you are moving, you have to move with purpose. There are two cases where you move — one is when you are telling a story so you can position different scenes of the story in different parts of the stage and the other is when you place certain ideas in different parts of the stage.
How can one come up with a perfect speechIJ
It’s not something that can be perfected in a couple of months. I took 10 years to create something refined. The original version of my speech I see something was done two years ago. It was twenty minutes long and it two me two years to bring it down to seven minutes and thirty seconds. I took time to figure out the exact number of words (172) to tell the story in a way that people from 140 different countries can understand.
What is the life of a public speaker likeIJ
When I first went to the world championship, I saw how valuable public speaking is. It is one of the few places where five thousand people come in and whatever message you give goes to all corners of the globe. Moreover, it’s an opportunity because what you say can literally change the lives of people. Every time I am on stage, I feel like I’m doing something with a purpose. The best part is that you become part of a community of people who are highly motivated and will persuade you to never give up.
Do schools and parents need to focus more on the personality development and not just academicsIJ
Irrespective of whether you study and get good grades or whether you don’t study, you need to have a set of values. If you have the right set of values you can be successful. Values first, education second, success third and not at the same time.
You’ve recently been acting as a guest faculty in Shiv Nadar School...
Schools here are very different from the ones we have back in Sri lanka and also the ones I’ve seen in the west. There are three major differences. One, everybody teaching here is a professional. You can see this by their thirst to develop. Second, the willingness to invest in skill building is high. This is not very prevalent in Asian schools. All the capital generated is put back into developing skills. The third difference is in the students. They have a curiosity to learn, to experiment, to practice, which is a good thing.