In the Disney movie “Aladdin” the villain Jafar comes out with a line wherein he says “Tell me about myself”.
I love this line!
How many of us love to talk about ourselves?
Especially when given the chance to make a speech with a personal story or with a hero’s journey.
I like to do the following exercise with my speeches.
Make a count of the number of “I”s, “Me”s and “Myself”s in your speech.
Here is a sample from one of my speeches:
Spoons and Forks – Ranjith Venkatesh | Speaker Shine
Number of “I”s: 21
Number of “Me”s: 7
Number of “Myself”s: 3
This speech has 659 words in all. Let us skip the “Me”s and “Myself”s.
The number of “I”s is 3% of the words in the speech.
If it crossed 10% the speech would make Jafar proud.
At 3% it is not high but still one has to see if there is a reason for “I”s to be where they are in the speech and if they are adding value.
How about your speech?
Is it about you or is it about your audience?