Upon completing my 10th year of collegiate teaching, I had listened to more than 5,000 speeches. In the 15 years since, I’ve logged thousands more. My clients range from civilian trainers in the U.S. Army, to coaches and executives, to MBA students, and everyone in between. These crazy numbers might explain my excellent shallow conversational skills. I know four to six minutes about thousands of topics.

People ask me what my biggest challenge is when coaching presentation skills, guessing the culprits to be the “ands and ums” or even how to calm those pesky nerves. Neither of those are my biggest challenge as a coach. My biggest challenge is helping people own the floor. By own the floor, I mean claim it as yours. This encompasses more than just confident nonverbals. It’s a comfort level with the fact that you belong on that stage, are excited about sharing your expertise, and have put in the necessary work to earn trust and credibility from your audience. If you do not feel that you belong in front of the group, neither will they.

While this is the case for most of my clients, I find it can be even more of a challenge for female ministers. Since I am a female minister, I truly get it. There is a reason that most people fear public speaking more than they fear death. Speaking to an audience can be a conspicuous and vulnerable place, just like being a female minister. No sane person is truly comfortable being vulnerable in front of large groups of people. In my opinion, being a female minister means that I am always on a stage in some state of vulnerability. In this situation, being female is a stressor that doesn’t go away because your church did the gender inclusion study and now women are participating more fully in your Sunday morning service. It just means there are more places for public vulnerability.

However, my coaching for you is the same for any of my clients. You are there; own it. Own it without reservation, defensiveness, anger, or apology. You belong, not because someone is allowing it, but because God has equipped you, and our world desperately needs you.

Instead of being distracted by what you fear someone might think about you, shift your energy to connecting with your audience. And by audience, I mean your elders, your coworkers, and individual church members. Connect with the people in front of you, with the person you already are. Doing this shifts you from worrying about saying the right thing to actually saying the right thing. Trust me, I absolutely know what it feels like to be falsely accused of being power hungry and for my gender to hijack perceptions of my work. I worry constantly about being too much in my ministry job whereas these fears never enter my mind with my consulting work.

I often remind my corporate clients that they can only guess what people are thinking but it’s generally wrong, especially in the heat of the moment. For female ministers, we aren’t guessing. We know that there are many who want to silence our voices, many who think we should be banned from elders’ meetings, and who are genuinely angry about the very idea of women in ministry. So yes, all of that is there. But so are you and so am I. Own your position without reservation, anger, defensiveness, or apology. We belong and our communication has to reflect that or no one else will believe it.

We have important kingdom work to do and we simply can’t do our best work if are distracted by the critics in meetings, in conversations, or at the mic. I’ll remind you of the famous quote by Theodore Roosevelt, recently championed by Brené Brown and edited to reflect a female minister’s perspective.

It is not the critic who counts; not the person who points out how the strong one stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the woman who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends herself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if she fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that her place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

I offer this encouragement, but I also offer you concrete communication skills. Part of owning your position is knowing how to handle yourself with poise and credibility so that when those awkward, difficult, conflicted, or simply conspicuous conversations arise, you know how to own your position.

In the coming articles, I will address communication trouble spots for female ministers. Moving from toleration toward belonging allows emancipation from our tightly-held, yet harmful, defense mechanisms. I’m smiling right now just thinking about God saying to you, “Fly, little bird. Fly.” If you need something faster than an article once per month, check out this Leadership Bootcamp for Women in Ministry.