Dilan Joseph, the Immediate Past President of Amana Bank Toastmasters Club, has been a Toastmaster since 2015. He recently triumphed at the Region 13 Toastmasters Quarterfinals and will now advance to the Semifinals of the World Championship of Public Speaking, due to be held at the Toastmasters International 2021 Virtual Convention.
He has been working in the banking industry for the past 16 years and is currently working as the Manager – Digital Channel experience at Amana Bank PLC.
Despite all his achievements, he feels that he is still on the journey of discovering himself.
Brunch caught up with Joseph on the upcoming competition and what it means to be a public speaker. Here's what he had to say.
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"As I believe, a public speaker is a personality. Audiences love to listen to confident speakers. You might be a subject expert, but if you don’t have the confidence to stand in front of an audience to explain the best you know, the audience would feel that you are bluffing. Anxiety is an indication of lack of confidence. Therefore, you need to keep on practising until you believe in your capabilities" Dilan Joseph[/caption]
What are your first experiences in public speaking?
I was an introverted person. So, I was very comfortable being an observer rather than converting my thoughts to words. Every time I stood, I felt like it’s the end of the world. Sometimes, I questioned myself: “Should I really have to do this?” Some nights were sleepless; the anxiety dominated my whole personality.
I remember there were so many meetings that I messed up, even though I had the knowledge and the capability of handling those job roles. Even knowing that public speaking was so important, it still took me almost 10 years to join Toastmasters due to the same reason. Fear of public speaking. When I joined Toastmasters my first two minutes impromptu speech was 40 seconds, and that also had a 20 second-long pause. But I never regret those mistakes. At a point those mistakes became my success. When you fail, you are not scared of the failures anymore. So, I took more speaking time. That made me confident.
Therefore, take the first step!
You were selected to advance to the World Championship of Public Speaking, what are your thoughts on this achievement?
I have been contesting since 2017. It was not an overnight success. At the same time there are 16,600 Toastmasters clubs in the world. Contesting starts at the club level, then area, division, district, regional quarterfinals, and now semifinals. Being selected for the final 28 out of 32,000 club-level winners in the whole wide world is an achievement. In every level you get the opportunity to meet different contenders and at every level you have to finetune your speech until it becomes a masterpiece. So, I feel every achievement is a paradigm shift. I feel it’s a privilege and honour to be there.
I’m proud to take the name of my country internationally. I believe I made the Sri Lankan Toastmasters fraternity, Amana bank Toastmasters Club, Amana Bank PLC, and my school – St. Benedict's College – proud of this journey.
Tell me about your experience during the Quarterfinals and what did you speak about?
Sri Lanka is one district (District 82), and for the Regional Quarterfinals District 82 competes with 10 other districts covering the geographical locations. Countries like India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, and Sri Lanka are in the same region.
District-level speech recording goes to the regional level. Therefore, the district speech should be competitive enough to break the region. So, I had to put everything to compete with the unknown and unseen crowd. That experience was on the next level.
My Quarterfinals speech title was “The Gap”. I spoke about my disability and how I accepted myself and moved on with my life. That was an inspirational speech for the audience to move on with their lives by accepting themselves.
How are you preparing for the World Championship?
When it comes to the contest, what I believe is that the speaker doesn’t give a speech on the stage; the speaker takes on a personality instead. Therefore, how I behave in my personal life has a direct impact on my personality on the stage. Hence, while I’m getting ready for the speech, I work on personal development activities such as mindfulness activities, regular practices, refining gestures, and recrafting my speeches.
All the past winners brought unique personalities. Definitely, if I go on the stage, it would be my own personality.
What are some of the most important skills a public speaker should have?
The main objective of public speakers is to synchronise the message to the audience. Therefore, the audience would understand the message with the exact emotions that the speaker wanted to deliver.
Understanding the audience is an utmost important element for a speaker. Therefore, the speaker can prepare for the audience. It doesn’t stop there; the speaker should read the audience at the time of delivery as well. Therefore, through body language and vocal variety, the speaker can capture the attention of the audience. The complexity of the language depends on the crowd and the topic you talk about.
Showing confidence is also another element. When you are confident it shows through your entire personality. Audiences like to listen to confident speakers because confidence shows credibility and genuineness. Therefore, the speaker should believe in what he wants to say and how he wants to say it. Practice makes a perfect personality and a speech.
At the end of the day what matters is how you say it.
What is the biggest challenge you face as a speaker?
Nowadays as a public speaker the biggest challenge I face is delivering speeches though the online platform. When it came to physical meetings, we were so comfortable since we could see the audience and their reactions. Therefore, our delivery could be managed with the situation and the audience’s reaction. However, by moving to online speeches, sometimes the speaker feels isolated since audience interaction could not be captured to deliver the speech better.
Would you say self-confidence is important in mastering public speaking?
As I believe, a public speaker is a personality. Audiences love to listen to confident speakers. You might be a subject expert, but if you don’t have the confidence to stand in front of an audience to explain the best you know, the audience would feel that you are bluffing. Anxiety is an indication of lack of confidence. Therefore, you need to keep on practising until you believe in your capabilities. That’s not enough. You have to rehearse yourself to a test audience or do it to your mentors. Their feedback would help you fine tune your delivery and be confident about it.
As a public speaker, self-confidence is a state of mind when you believe in the content you want to talk about, language command, gestures and vocals, and physical outlook; as in how you present yourself. When all elements are lined up together you will find a confident you.
I must specially thank Distinguished Toastmaster (DTM) Ganga Fernando, DTM Sudash Liyanage, my initial mentor DTM Sanjeewa Fonseka, Amana Bank Toastmasters Club, and the Toastmasters fraternity for helping me to develop my personality as a public speaker.
What advice would you give to those who wish to be a public speaker?
If you want to be a public speaker, put yourself to the deep end, do it when the time is young. The perfect moment is not after, it's already here. Your fear would be there until you commence your journey. Your journey will discover your potential capabilities. I can assure you that you would be surprised when you find how big your capabilities are. It happened to me, it happened to many, and it will happen to you.
Your dreams come true when you take action. Take small steps; without knowing it you would reach your dreams. At that moment your success will make the noise.
Always remember your competition is with you. Not with anyone else. It doesn’t matter how many times you win or lose, learn from every step and be a better version at the next. Be agile because the world is changing.
Understand your audience; the audience could be anyone – your family, colleagues, Toastmasters, or non-Toastmasters, etc. Learn the art of empathy. What you do in your day-to-day life makes you a natural champion. There's a clear distinction between an actor and a champion.
Always be who you are.
Do you have plans for the future?
Yes indeed; as a short-term goal, winning the World Champion of Public Speaking would be my dream. Therefore, my full focus is getting prepared for the big competition. Additionally, I have a vision to help young graduates to develop their public speaking skills in order to enter the corporate world with a competitive and professional outlook. We have so many talented people in the younger generations. I believe that as responsible public speakers, it should be our duty to support them to take their first steps.
"As I believe, a public speaker is a personality. Audiences love to listen to confident speakers. You might be a subject expert, but if you don’t have the confidence to stand in front of an audience to explain the best you know, the audience would feel that you are bluffing. Anxiety is an indication of lack of confidence. Therefore, you need to keep on practising until you believe in your capabilities" Dilan Joseph[/caption]
What are your first experiences in public speaking?
I was an introverted person. So, I was very comfortable being an observer rather than converting my thoughts to words. Every time I stood, I felt like it’s the end of the world. Sometimes, I questioned myself: “Should I really have to do this?” Some nights were sleepless; the anxiety dominated my whole personality.
I remember there were so many meetings that I messed up, even though I had the knowledge and the capability of handling those job roles. Even knowing that public speaking was so important, it still took me almost 10 years to join Toastmasters due to the same reason. Fear of public speaking. When I joined Toastmasters my first two minutes impromptu speech was 40 seconds, and that also had a 20 second-long pause. But I never regret those mistakes. At a point those mistakes became my success. When you fail, you are not scared of the failures anymore. So, I took more speaking time. That made me confident.
Therefore, take the first step!
You were selected to advance to the World Championship of Public Speaking, what are your thoughts on this achievement?
I have been contesting since 2017. It was not an overnight success. At the same time there are 16,600 Toastmasters clubs in the world. Contesting starts at the club level, then area, division, district, regional quarterfinals, and now semifinals. Being selected for the final 28 out of 32,000 club-level winners in the whole wide world is an achievement. In every level you get the opportunity to meet different contenders and at every level you have to finetune your speech until it becomes a masterpiece. So, I feel every achievement is a paradigm shift. I feel it’s a privilege and honour to be there.
I’m proud to take the name of my country internationally. I believe I made the Sri Lankan Toastmasters fraternity, Amana bank Toastmasters Club, Amana Bank PLC, and my school – St. Benedict's College – proud of this journey.
Tell me about your experience during the Quarterfinals and what did you speak about?
Sri Lanka is one district (District 82), and for the Regional Quarterfinals District 82 competes with 10 other districts covering the geographical locations. Countries like India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, and Sri Lanka are in the same region.
District-level speech recording goes to the regional level. Therefore, the district speech should be competitive enough to break the region. So, I had to put everything to compete with the unknown and unseen crowd. That experience was on the next level.
My Quarterfinals speech title was “The Gap”. I spoke about my disability and how I accepted myself and moved on with my life. That was an inspirational speech for the audience to move on with their lives by accepting themselves.
How are you preparing for the World Championship?
When it comes to the contest, what I believe is that the speaker doesn’t give a speech on the stage; the speaker takes on a personality instead. Therefore, how I behave in my personal life has a direct impact on my personality on the stage. Hence, while I’m getting ready for the speech, I work on personal development activities such as mindfulness activities, regular practices, refining gestures, and recrafting my speeches.
All the past winners brought unique personalities. Definitely, if I go on the stage, it would be my own personality.
What are some of the most important skills a public speaker should have?
The main objective of public speakers is to synchronise the message to the audience. Therefore, the audience would understand the message with the exact emotions that the speaker wanted to deliver.
Understanding the audience is an utmost important element for a speaker. Therefore, the speaker can prepare for the audience. It doesn’t stop there; the speaker should read the audience at the time of delivery as well. Therefore, through body language and vocal variety, the speaker can capture the attention of the audience. The complexity of the language depends on the crowd and the topic you talk about.
Showing confidence is also another element. When you are confident it shows through your entire personality. Audiences like to listen to confident speakers because confidence shows credibility and genuineness. Therefore, the speaker should believe in what he wants to say and how he wants to say it. Practice makes a perfect personality and a speech.
At the end of the day what matters is how you say it.
What is the biggest challenge you face as a speaker?
Nowadays as a public speaker the biggest challenge I face is delivering speeches though the online platform. When it came to physical meetings, we were so comfortable since we could see the audience and their reactions. Therefore, our delivery could be managed with the situation and the audience’s reaction. However, by moving to online speeches, sometimes the speaker feels isolated since audience interaction could not be captured to deliver the speech better.
Would you say self-confidence is important in mastering public speaking?
As I believe, a public speaker is a personality. Audiences love to listen to confident speakers. You might be a subject expert, but if you don’t have the confidence to stand in front of an audience to explain the best you know, the audience would feel that you are bluffing. Anxiety is an indication of lack of confidence. Therefore, you need to keep on practising until you believe in your capabilities. That’s not enough. You have to rehearse yourself to a test audience or do it to your mentors. Their feedback would help you fine tune your delivery and be confident about it.
As a public speaker, self-confidence is a state of mind when you believe in the content you want to talk about, language command, gestures and vocals, and physical outlook; as in how you present yourself. When all elements are lined up together you will find a confident you.
I must specially thank Distinguished Toastmaster (DTM) Ganga Fernando, DTM Sudash Liyanage, my initial mentor DTM Sanjeewa Fonseka, Amana Bank Toastmasters Club, and the Toastmasters fraternity for helping me to develop my personality as a public speaker.
What advice would you give to those who wish to be a public speaker?
If you want to be a public speaker, put yourself to the deep end, do it when the time is young. The perfect moment is not after, it's already here. Your fear would be there until you commence your journey. Your journey will discover your potential capabilities. I can assure you that you would be surprised when you find how big your capabilities are. It happened to me, it happened to many, and it will happen to you.
Your dreams come true when you take action. Take small steps; without knowing it you would reach your dreams. At that moment your success will make the noise.
Always remember your competition is with you. Not with anyone else. It doesn’t matter how many times you win or lose, learn from every step and be a better version at the next. Be agile because the world is changing.
Understand your audience; the audience could be anyone – your family, colleagues, Toastmasters, or non-Toastmasters, etc. Learn the art of empathy. What you do in your day-to-day life makes you a natural champion. There's a clear distinction between an actor and a champion.
Always be who you are.
Do you have plans for the future?
Yes indeed; as a short-term goal, winning the World Champion of Public Speaking would be my dream. Therefore, my full focus is getting prepared for the big competition. Additionally, I have a vision to help young graduates to develop their public speaking skills in order to enter the corporate world with a competitive and professional outlook. We have so many talented people in the younger generations. I believe that as responsible public speakers, it should be our duty to support them to take their first steps.