USA Funds^® University’s new professional development webcast series offers helpful tips for improving office skills and business expertise for financial aid administrators of all levels. The webcast series will focus on three goals:

• Presenting the skills necessary to address challenges associated with change.
• Helping hone skills in all types of communications.
• Providing additional insights into building a strong team and staying motivated.

Sessions are scheduled for 2-3 p.m. Eastern time covering the following topics:

Addressing Change

Change is not always easy. This session helps you understand the fundamental elements of organizational change, offers practices that help make smooth transitions, shares guidance on doing more with less, and provides direction on how to make the most of the opportunity that change provides.

Communication Skills

How you communicate with staff and students makes a difference. Learn general, time-proven communication skills that involve listening, determining customer needs, and dealing with challenging behavior while saving time and reducing confusion between staff members and students.

Dealing with Customers in Difficult Situations

Dealing with emotional customers can be challenging. Understanding a customer’s needs and offering solutions is the key to handling these types of situations. This session provides helpful tips on how to calm an emotional customer, and teaches you how to look for win-win solutions and resolve conflict with education and training.

Effective Communication Between Generations
This session will open the door to better understanding of the many generations within the work world.  Learn details about each generation and the factors that motivate them. Understanding the differences will help improve communication, make project teams more effective and enable staff to better relate to each other and students.

Managing Stress
By taking good care of yourself, organizing your workload and being proactive, you can counteract the affects of stress and even see positive outcomes. The session includes a brief quiz to help you determine your personal stress level and offers tips for managing stress.

Motivating Staff
This session shows you how to motivate your team, explores the attributes people expect in a great place to work, offers ideas for incentives and awards, shares tips for how to teach staff to mentor others and provides sure-fire steps to help staff members stand out and improve themselves.

Teamwork
Learn how to build a cohesive team in this session by developing an understanding of best practices for achieving stronger team commitment, building relationships amongst team members and making the work place more enjoyable and productive.

Once you’ve registered, login information and training materials will be sent the morning of the webcast to the e-mail address provided during registration.