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When leading a Good Soil seminar, how do you get through all of the seminar material on time without seeming rushed?

Three simple hints will help you stay on target with your time constraints and still cover what you must.

1. Teach with a team. If you try to teach the whole seminar by yourself, you may have other problems as well, but one will be trying to stay within time limits. When one teacher is up front the other one or two can be in the back making sure the whole team is staying on task and on time. Now, communication regarding time constraints should only be done between teachers and not in front of the class—even jokingly. That only detracts from the subject and from credibility. It’s great to be part of a team that is helping one another behind the scenes and supportive up front. But how do you know if you are off schedule?
2. Use the GSED Teaching Assignments Template. On http://www.goodsoil.com, under the “Trainers Resources” tab, one of the many resources you will find is this template. Besides dividing the teaching into chunks, it also lists the amount of time each chunk should take (if teaching the entire seminar in 14 hours) and assigns each chunk to a teacher. When you sit down after teaching a chunk, you can see how the time is going. Also, when a teacher is ‘waxing eloquent’ over their time, the other teachers can discreetly help him/her finish up sooner (see #1).
3. Use a timer for activities. Controlling the time in this manner helps keep you on schedule. There are many types of timers you can use from oven/egg timers to sophisticated timers you can project from your computer. One free download available is from “Cool Timer.” Simply google ‘cool timer’ and you will find this easy to use timer. Check the "Links" section under "Resources" to see where you can purchase the on-screen timer that we use (TimerTools Software).

When leading a Good Soil seminar, how do you get out of a discussion that has turned into a debate?

Before You Get Into Those Situations:

1. The first thing to do is to try to avoid those kinds of situations as much as possible.  Think about the kinds of potentially emotion-charged topics that might spawn a debate and prepare ahead of time for them.  When you approach a topic like that, “frame it” with disclaimers and lots of humility.
   Example: We approach the Good Soil scale with disclaimers such as—it’s only a humanly constructed model so it isn’t infallible, etc.
2. Use a “Questions Board” and, from the very beginning of the seminar, direct people to place their questions on that board, along with their names.  That allows you to decide if you want to answer the question in a private setting or before the entire group.
3. Be aware that many of these kinds of issues have been addressed in the resource articles in the Supplement section of the notebook, or on the Cultivate blog-forum site.  Be familiar with these sources and direct the person who asks the question to those resources.  That’s one of the major reasons that we’ve created those resources—to keep emotion-charged issues out of the general discussion forum of the class, without simply dodging them.
   Example: Be familiar with the “Affirmations and Disclaimers” and “What Must I [Really] Do to Be Saved” articles, as well as the many FAQs and blog articles on http://Cultivate.GoodSoil.com.

When You Find Yourself in Those Situations:

1. If the issue isn’t crucial, say something like “Thanks for sharing your view on that.” and then move on with the seminar.
2. If the issue is important, state your position and invite the person to discuss it further later, outside of the main sessions.

Recommended Resource: Dealing with Difficult Participants by Dave Arch (Order from Amazon.com)

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