Most people (56.8%) worldwide identify as introvertsaccording to a 2020 study by The Myers-Briggs Company. Those with one introverted personality are often reflective and self-aware, prefer to write rather than talk, and feel tired after being in a crowd.

Obviously, very introverted are not big fans of public speaking. Addressing an audience may be an inevitable part of professional life, but the average introvert maybe it's not screaming to get in front of a group.

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Even the most successful business leaders in the world are not immune to stage fright.

Warren Buffettthe 94-year-old billionaire chairman and CEO of conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway's holding company considers himself one introvert. In his biography The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder, he admits that public speaking made him physically ill.

^{Image Credit: Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images. Warren Buffett.}

“I was terrified of public speaking,” Buffett says. “You wouldn't believe how I would be if I had to give a speech. I was so terrified I couldn't do it. I would throw up. In fact, I arranged my life so that I never had to to face anyone”.

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after Buffett graduated from Columbia Business School, where he studied under investor Benjamin Graham, he returned to Omaha, Nebraska. There, he saw an ad for a public speaking course using the Dale Carnegie method.

Buffett was familiar with Carnegie's 1936 self-help book How to win friends and influence peopleand he had even signed up for a public speaking class at Carnegie in New York—before he backed out and stopped paying the $100 check.

Buffett decided to give the course another shot at Omaha.

“I took a hundred dollars in cash and handed it to Wally Keenan, the instructor, and said, 'Take it before I change my mind,'” he recalled in the. Snowball.

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In Keenan's classroom at Omaha's Rome Hotel, Buffett discovered the key to overcoming his fear of public speaking.

“The way it works is this you learn to get out of yourself“- explains Buffett. “I mean, why should you be able to just talk to someone five minutes ago and then raise money for a group? So they teach you psychological tricks to overcome this. Some of them are alone practice – just doing it and practicing.”

Practicing under the same conditions in which you will speak or otherwise perform can help promote success in high-pressure situations, says Sian Beilock, cognitive scientist and current president of Dartmouth College. said The entrepreneur in the year 2022.

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Additionally, it can help to take a step back as the event approaches, according to Beilock. Then, during the moment of high risk, it suggests the positive interpretation of physiological responses; for example, consider sweaty palms or a racing heart as signs of excitement rather than anxiety.

“And it worked,” Buffett says about the psychological techniques he learned in his public speaking class decades ago. “This is the most important degree I have.”

BuffettThe certificate of completion of the Carnegie course, dated January 1952, hangs above the sofa in his office, according to Schroeder's account.

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now, Buffett stands in front of one audience of 40 thousand at Berkshire Hathaway's annual shareholder meeting, where attendees line up hours before the event to hear the Oracle of Omaha.