Feb 11, 2019

Preparation Crucial for Delivering Learning Initiative Successfully

Ms Marija Lončar, Senior Adviser and Coordinator at the Training Department at the Croatian Tax Administration, attended CEF run learning initiative which aimed to inspire SEE tax official to get involved in sharing their knowledge and experience on topics related to modern approaches to tax compliance at the CEF future learning initiatives delivered within Tax Policy and Administration Learning Program. Throughout the event participants were encouraged to reflect on what is their role as a facilitator, what are their strengths and where is room for improvement. In this way, they were able to give and receive constructive feedback, distill relevant lessons, and feed such information back into their practice of facilitating the learning of others. We are happy to share some of these reflections offered by Ms Lončar, here:

As a senior adviser and coordinator at the Training Department in the Croatian Tax Administration, I had the opportunity to participate in the Training of Trainers workshop at the Center of Excellence in Finance in Ljubljana.

It was a brilliantly organized workshop with an experienced trainer. During the two and a half days of very interactive training, Mr. André Booms led us through the most important rules for conducting a successful training event. Didactic and ICC (introduction, core and conclusion) models, varieties of methods, all sorts of media for making presentations interesting, and a huge number of tips and tricks, which every successful trainer should use, were introduced through discussions, exercises and games.

Every participant had a pre-attendance assignment to prepare a PowerPoint presentation about their country, everyday job and some specific work project. Based on our PowerPoint presentations, Mr. Booms made us aware of the importance of the planning stage of a training event. He showed us that thinking about your audience, defining their pre-knowledge, choosing the models, methods and media that you are going to use, and planning the duration of the total presentation and each slide, are all important if you want to prepare and conduct a great presentation.

All participants demonstrated what they had learned the previous day about the required qualities of a good trainer through self-evaluation in order to assess the prepared presentation and performance in terms of models, methods, media, body language, and interaction with the audience. After self-evaluation, other participants and the trainer gave their personal impressions of the presentation and performance.

Learning by trying and making mistakes is long-term knowledge. The tips that Andre gave me about body language, eye contact, number of topics per slide, and interaction with the audience is something that I will carry with me for a lifetime. From now on, they will be on my mind every time I have to make a presentation.

Currently, I am drafting a presentation about a new information system that the Croatian Tax Administration has implemented, and I am already using the precious knowledge from this workshop. Before the Training of Trainers workshop I did not pay much attention to the preparation phase, but now I understand that it is actually one of the most important parts of a presentation.

Last but not least, another great outcome of this workshop was the new network of colleagues and connections with the friendly CEF staff.