TG Speakers Bureau
To schedule a program or to find out more about the TG Speakers Bureau, contact your TG account executive at (800) 892-1357.
Professional Development
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Building and Managing Teams
Topics that assist financial aid office staff in developing effective team-building strategies that result in improved service to students and families on their campuses.
- Accountability That Works!™
This workshop builds financial aid staff's and management's ability to plan and complete tasks in a way that benefits the school, their staff and students. At every level of every financial aid office, projects begin, tasks are assigned, efforts are made, and deadlines are met — or missed. Directions are given, but financial aid professionals don't understand them. Deliverables are promised, but not supplied. Agreements are misunderstood or never made. It's not really anyone's fault — it's just an example of how people within their financial aid work environment might fail to communicate in a specific and clear manner about the task they assign or accept. Accountability That Works! — provides a systematic way to overcome these tendencies. By focusing on a three-stage cycle of accountability — responsibility, empowerment, and accountability — joined by clear agreements, the financial aid professional can begin to make significant progress in the delivery of higher education services to students and parents. - Coaching for Performance
Want to improve your coaching skills? Come participate in this interactive program in which we'll share best practices of effective coaches, assess your individual coaching skills, and practice specific techniques that can be used to improve performance, build stronger teams, and create a positive, collaborative work environment. - Generations M.E.E.T. for Respect in the Workplace
With workers from four generations now active in the workforce, the potential for misunderstanding, frustration, and conflict puts increasing pressure on productivity. To turn that challenge into a competitive advantage, this program applies the M.E.E.T. approach to the complexities of effectively working in and managing a multigenerational workforce. Participants will gain insights, strategies, and skills that help minimize generational conflict and strengthen collaboration. - How Full Is Your Bucket?™
This presentation will discuss how higher education institutions can create positive interactions with financial aid work teams, students and parents and impact an individual's emotional bank account. Research shows how our emotional bank accounts effect work relationships, job performance and team synergy in the financial aid office and your school campus. Can a positive interaction have an even stronger impact than a negative one? This presentation is based on the #1 New York Times bestseller book and the work of Donald O. Clifton, Ph. D. and Tom Rath and Gallup research. - Leading Your Team through Challenging Times
Ever feel like change is happening too quickly in your Financial Aid Office? Are you facing budget cuts and reduced FTEs? Struggling with industry issues or switching to a new FAMS? To learn ways of leading your team through challenging times like these, TG provides a fun, interactive exercise. This program provides participants with an opportunity to guide their teams through a challenging scenario, working both individually and in small groups. This exercise is designed to show how, when functioning as a team, the group can outperform the individual. Do you and your team have what it takes to prioritize competing tasks and successfully weather these volatile times? Come find out! - Teamwork: What's Your Style?
Teamwork is essential to the smooth operation of a successful financial aid office. Participants in this seminar will identify the characteristics of great teams and assess their predominant behavior styles when working in a financial aid team. We'll discuss strengths and liabilities of each style and how each team member in the financial aid office can become a more supportive team player. (Note that class size is limited to a maximum of 30 financial aid participants.)
Communication
Topics designed to improve how financial aid professionals communicate with each other and the students and parents they serve.
- Say What?: Communicating More Effectively With Students, Parents, and Other Financial Aid Professionals
How we communicate with students, parents, and each other often determines the quality of both the internal and external customer service experience. Is the message received always the same as the message sent? This program reviews the basics of sending and receiving messages and explores specific techniques you can use to become a more effective communicator with students, parents, and colleagues. Topics include the use of "I" messages, non-verbal communication and active listening. - What Do You Say?
When faced with a difficult service challenge with a student or parent, the first few seconds and your first few words often determine your success or failure. You can become more effective in responding to challenging situations when you are equipped with exceptional listening and communication skills. This highly interactive program answers the question "What Do You Say?" when faced with these difficult scenarios in your financial aid office. The financial aid professional will learn the key words and phrases needed to handle tough customer service moments with ease and confidence. - What's My Communication Style?
This interactive workshop is designed to help the financial aid professional discover the strengths and weaknesses of different communication styles so that they can work and communicate more effectively within the financial aid office and with the students and families they serve. Sometimes the communication breakdowns are more of a result of style differences than the messages themselves. Using an assessment, the financial aid professional will learn their preference for one of four communication styles, identify the various facets of communication, and learn how to use their own style to improve communication with students, parents, and their colleagues in the higher education industry. (Note that class size is limited to a maximum of 30 financial aid participants.) - Working Without a Script
Want to improve the communication process in your financial aid office to solve problems more creatively, build stronger teams, and create a more positive, collaborative work environment? This interactive program shares the basics of improvisation developed by the Second City Comedy Troupe to help financial aid professionals improve how they communicate and solve problems so that they can better serve their students and families.
Effective Work Habits
Topics that will help participants learn more effective work habits to improve customer service, motivation, change management, and other workplace issues that impact the financial aid office environment.
- Best Practices in Customer Service
Based on years of in-depth research with financial aid administrators, TG has developed a list of customer service principles specifically for financial aid offices. In this interactive workshop hosted by TG, participants will share their expertise to identify specific steps and procedures that have proven successful when implementing customer service principles. Participants will take away dozens of best practices and a copy of TG's new publication, Customer Service in Financial Aid, which reinforces the link between customer service and student recruitment and retention. - Dealing with Difficult Students
Do your student or parent customers sometimes get frustrated or angry? Are you ever faced with a student or parent who is upset and expects you to do something you just can't do? Explore a six-step model to defuse emotional customers and deal with difficult situations. The financial aid professional will practice via role-playing exercises based on real financial aid scenarios. - Diversity: A Mosaic of Possibilities for the Financial Aid Office
Like the varied pieces of a mosaic, your office and school are made up of people with different backgrounds and experiences. To help students and families of all backgrounds, it's important to build awareness and understanding of diversity to enhance communication. You and the students and families you serve benefit when an inclusive environment of mutual respect is promoted. - Doing More with Less
Financial aid offices are experiencing an unprecedented number of challenges and changes that are requiring management and staff to do more with less. In this interactive program, participants will have the opportunity to learn and share best practices related to task prioritization, time management, personal and team productivity, and analyzing their current situations. In addition, this program will provide some ideas on how to help staff members stay motivated during a transition as offices work toward improvements in these areas. - Ducks in a Row: Staying Organized in the Fast-Paced World of Financial Aid
Even when it's not peak season, financial aid offices can be inundated with work. Feeling overwhelmed by paperwork, looming deadlines, and conflicting priorities? Improve your organizational skills and learn a streamlining formula that will make your work more efficient. You can save yourself valuable time and energy by making a few modifications in your financial aid office and move closer to the elusive work/life balance most people desire in their lives. You and your students will benefit when you focus on what matters most. - Embracing Change: Promoting Excellence in Financial Aid
As a financial aid professional being a "change-agent" means more than just "being on board" with change. In this interactive session, the financial aid professional will be able to assess and understand responses to change in the financial aid work environment, work effectively with their peers, students and families during change and take positive actions to successfully navigate (not react to) change. Most people view change as a threat to what is familiar to them. However, change is inevitable. And while we can't control much of the world changing around us, we can control how we respond to it. Embracing change is a great way to promote excellence at your higher education institution. - Emotional Intelligence™
This course will assist the financial aid professional with maximizing productivity and is based on adult learning principles. What makes someone a top performer in the world of Financial Aid? This course will explore the area of Emotional Intelligence (EI) and the importance of EI in a work environment. Emotional intelligence will help the financial aid professional be less reactive, more inclusive, more creative, more resilient, and enables us to enroll others in a shared vision of higher education access to students and families. We will identify personal EI competencies and areas for improvement, examine some of the common misconceptions about IQ versus EQ, and define three key areas of focus: self-awareness, self-regulation, and motivation, and identify the EI attributes in top performers. - For the Love of It
Why do you work in financial aid and how can you find a way to love what you do? Utilizing an inspiring video from photographer Dewitt Jones, participants will be given specific techniques for finding joy and meaning in each day. We all have the ability to love what we do if we begin each day with a full cup, honor our passion, make contributions to those around us, and express our gratitude regularly. When you work for the love of it, you will serve as an inspiration to your students and your co-workers. - Redress Your Stress
Participants will define stress and determine the cost of stress from a personal and organizational perspective. You will also identify common stressors within the financial aid environment and discuss the best ways to help reduce or eliminate those stressors from your work environment. Learning objectives include defining stress, determining your personal stressors, identifying stress reduction techniques, and developing your own stress management plan. - Resolving Conflict: What's Your Style?
Experts recognize five basic methods of dealing with conflict: competing, collaborating, compromising, accommodating, and avoiding. Complete a brief assessment designed to reveal your dominant conflict resolution style in your financial aid work environment. The financial aid profession will participate in a discussion of appropriate and inappropriate uses of each style within the context of a financial aid office. If time permits, this topic can be combined with an interactive exercise that tests your financial aid team's ability to resolve conflict using a 'survival scenario'. (Note that class size is limited to a maximum of 30 participants.) - Working with You Is Killing Me™: Freeing Yourself from Emotional Traps at Work
Feeling caught — or "hooked" — in an emotionally distressing situation at work? This session helps participants "unhook" from emotional pitfalls in the financial aid office as well as manage difficult personalities.
Leadership
Topics that develop and reinforce skills for those in leadership positions within the financial aid industry.
- Adding Leadership Skills to Your Management Toolkit
Learn to clarify the distinction between management and leadership in your financial aid office. Working together with other financial aid professionals, you will identify characteristics of great leaders. Recognizing that leadership complements management rather than replaces it, you will identify ways to become a more effective financial aid leader. This session is intended primarily for supervisors and managers. - Ethics4Everyone
You read about it in the papers and you hear about it on the evening news. The "it" is ETHICS and it has quickly become one of today's most critical concerns about financial aid. This presentation will provide financial aid staff with practical tools to know what is right, do what is right, manage competing rights, and know that everything you do counts toward ethical behavior on your campus. - Leadership at Work
Explore the concept that leadership in a financial aid office is not a matter of job title but of style. Leadership attributes such as building trust, embracing change, helping others succeed, thinking creatively, and overcoming adversity are important elements to leading an effective financial aid office. Higher education institutions will discuss tips and tools to use in becoming a better leader in their financial aid office and on campus. This session is primarily for non-supervisors. - Leading Change through Appreciative Inquiry
What might be possible if employees were fully engaged and using their strengths to collectively achieve shared visions? Beyond being an organizational change process, Appreciative Inquiry is a collaborative, strengths-based approach to both personal and organizational development that is proving to be highly effective in organizations throughout the world. It is a way of bringing about change that shares leadership and learning, fully engaging everyone in the organization. - Leading to Ethics — Ten Leadership Strategies for Building a High-Integrity Organization
Ethical business starts with ethical leadership in financial aid office. Ultimately, it is up to the leadership to ensure that a financial aid office avoids the pitfalls of wrongdoing and reaps the rewards of doing right. Ethical leadership is a responsibility that comes with the territory and the title. This program can assist financial aid leaders with the tools to maintain a values-based environment and meet their ethical leadership responsibilities on campus.
Personal Empowerment
Topics that empower those who work in financial aid to make a difference, achieve goals, and help their students achieve their higher education dreams.
- Making a Difference: One Student at a Time
Utilizing an inspiring video from award-winning photographer DeWitt Jones, this seminar helps you take the time to affirm your strengths and celebrate everything that's right in the financial aid industry. Recent trends will be reviewed to remind you of the difference you are making in the lives of your students and their families. - Motivating and Recognizing Employees
Research clearly indicates that a motivated workforce is a more productive workforce, yet developing highly committed employees can be challenging in today's work environment. While extrinsic rewards can have some impact on employee motivation, it is what employees find to be intrinsically rewarding that produces the greatest performance improvements. This interactive session will provide participants with the opportunity to develop ideas and strategies for creating a motivating work climate that allows employees to perform at their best.
