Soft Skills
Soft skills are incredibly important in Instructional Design. You will work with Project Managers, Subject Matter Experts, teammates, and other stakeholders to create the best learning experiences you can. That requires adaptability, communication skills, teamwork, and taking responsibility for your work.
Adaptability
Feedback happens. Changes are requested constantly, over and over. You have to detach your sense of self-worth from your work because it will change over and over and over. You will get requests to change 500 links on one page, and 500 headers on web pages to match. And then change them again. And again. And again. You will be asked to add alt text to 1,000 images. You will be asked to add facilitator notes to every page of every copy of every workbook in the company. You will be transferred to different projects in the middle of your progress on your current one. This is normal. Try not to get too frustrated. It's not you, and it's not the quality of your work that's causing the changes.
Communication
You will be communicating with everyone inside and outside of your team via email, video call, meetings, and (if you are a facilitator) public speaking.
Click to open a YouTube video about public speaking skills.
Writing clearly – a lot of this job is writing scripts, storyboards, facilitator guides, job aids, communication with stakeholders (subject matter experts, project managers, project owners, etc.) and assessments.
Teamwork
You will know a lot of things that your teammates don't. Your teammates will know a lot of things that you don't know. Share with each other. Fill each other in on important updates. You will work with subject matter experts (SMEs) and stakeholders who are busy and not always sure what they want. Take the time to listen to their needs.
Responsibility
You'll be assigned projects, and parts of projects, to do independently. It's important that you complete them by or before the deadline because other people are depending on you to complete your part so they can complete theirs, and so that the project can get into the learners' hands so they can use it.
