I help people with two things. One is what they say. And the second thing is how they say it.
In 2003, over ten intense and gruelling 14-hour days, I meticulously refined and streamlined the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka's revolutionary United Nations peace speech. This task is typically a high-pressure endeavour, often neglected by the speaker until the eleventh hour and delegated to the speechwriter, along with the stress.
Like Obama and Clinton who both worked alongside their speechwriters, the then Sri Lankan Prime Minister, now President Ranil Wickremesinghe, understood the power and potential of a speech but he also recognised the significance of effective speechwriting and speaker coaching.
He granted me unprecedented access to his thoughts and meetings during our ten-day stint in New York. We hadn't met before, but this immersive experience in which I was in the room for most of his meetings enabled me to observe, soak up, and grasp his speaking style, mannerisms, preferred vocabulary, and unique voice.
We dedicated late nights in his Secret Service-protected corner suite, practising his speech after his relentless schedule of meetings, recognising its crucial role in the speech's success.
We were preparing for the speech in the United Nations Nations Plaza Hotel, and the speech was taking place in the U.N. But he wasn't addressing the U.N.; for this speech, the people in the room were not the priority; they were not our audience, the people of Sri Lanka was. His audience was the people on the other side of the red dots of the cameras.
This Prime Minister had an ambitious vision for Sri Lanka, and our 10-day partnership allowed me to craft, rewrite, polish and finalise a speech and then help him deliver it in a way that resonated deeply. We ditched jargon. We used small words for his big ideas.
The welcome he received when he returned to Sri Lanka was overwhelming. The mere 30-kilometre journey from Bandaranaike International Airport to his official residence in Colombo took over 8 hours due to the enthusiastic crowds of over 100,000 gathered to greet him.
His speech moved his nation; imagine what something similar could do for you, your organisation and your legacy.