Instructional Design Team Work
As an instructional designer, my people skills are far more important than my technical skills. I work across many different teams on a weekly basis.
Cultivating relationships build on a foundation of trust is mandatory to be successful at my job. I need my business partners to come to me proactively about upcoming learning needs so I’m not always scrambling to push out reactionary content.
To give you an idea of the type of collaboration of which I am a part, here are some of the teams I have worked with as an instructional designer. These teams may vary across industries; this list represents teams I’ve been a part of in both tech and finance.
Instructional Design Department: I work with other IDs closely to follow training development processes. We establish guidelines, review each other’s work, and pursue common goals.
Customer Education Services: Our larger customer education team includes trainers, IDs, managers, and learning technology specialists. We all work to provide world-class technical training to our customers.
Product Team: This is the other team I work the most closely with, and it includes my software product managers and owners as well as SMEs. My role in this team is to develop the training roadmap by staying ahead of new functionality releases and client needs.
Line of Business: There are different organizations within the company that might need specific training, for example, client services might need new onboarding materials for phone reps, or analysts may need a course on a new software roll-out.
Talent Management in HR: Within HR, people development is an important area, and I’ve been called in to develop learning experiences for leaders, workshops related to DEI issues, and annual compliance training that will be pushed via the company’s LMS.
Project Team: Temporary projects bring people together from all over the organization who don’t work together normally to accomplish a specific goal. For example, there may be a one-off urgent implementation for a client that requires a variety of services, and if education is included, I’ll be added to the team for a few months. In this case, I report to the project manager instead of my normal customer education manager.
I think this highlights why instructional design is never dull. My job in tech is always presenting new and exciting challenges, and no two days are the same.
Because of the variety of teams on which I serve, I get to meet people from all across the company and build connections with people outside of customer education. Seeing familiar faces makes me feel like part of the bigger picture and provides a sense of fulfillment in my work. Team work makes the dream work, eh?
