35 More Qualities of the Ideal Instructional Designer

The effective instructional designer should:
Competently Work with SMEs
1. Put one’s ego aside when necessary and accept client feedback openly and non-defensively in order to nurture client relationships.
2. ‘Effectively channel’ SME’s—competently work with a ‘brain dump.’
3. Be a good listener. Tease out and focus on outcomes.
4. Be a good interpreter.
5. Ask a lot of questions.
Design and Develop Effective and Creative Content
6. Have good analytical skills.
7. Extract information from SMEs and structure and organize content it in a way that makes it easy to learn.
8. Organize information well. If it’s not something the learner can easily find, it’s not really there after all.
9. Conduct research and synthesize information from a variety of sources.
10. Write well-defined measurable objectives based on the needs of the learner.
11. Write well.
12. Have a capacity for ideation. This goes beyond thinking about learning and teaching and relates to the discovery of truth.
13. Communicate well both visually and verbally.
14. Create learning sessions with information that is useful and applicable to the learners’ real world—i.e. in the workplace where transfer of knowledge can occur.
15. Be a flexible problem solver who can apply instructional design concepts appropriately to unique situations.
16. Keep the problem uppermost while designing solutions.
17. Create deliverables that are learner-centered.
18. Create connections for the learner to the instruction, learning objectives and business goals through ID principles, multimedia design, activities and feedback.
19. Engage the learner with writing, layout, imagery, theme and activity/feedback.
Have a Passion for Learning
20. Be obsessed with learning everything, but be prepared to take action before you have learned everything you might want to know. Be courageous about the choices you will have to make. (Chris Barnes)
21. Have some experience as a teacher, lots of experience as a learner and a passion for learning.
22. Have a background in education coupled with curiosity and a love/hate relationship with technology.
23. Learn quickly and break things down in a way others can learn the information.
24. Engage in cross-disciplinary knowledge, consult with others and expand one’s own knowledge base and perspective constantly.
25. Have a passion and a thirst for learning. Be a learner’s advocate. Have a passion for truth, the ability to see things as they are (e.g., critical reflection), and a commitment to the learner.
Develop Business Savvy
26. Focus on expected business outcomes and design as leanly as possible to reduce time to proficiency and control costs. To be able to build a business case for learning and demonstrate why their solution will work cost-effectively.
27. Create an effective design within the constraints of a project regarding available technology, budget, time and human capital.
28. Be a skilled advocate for learning, for the audience, and for an effective process in order to gain resources and influence decisions.
29. Know how to facilitate—to teach a SME how to use a technology or demonstrate a new technique. It also helps guide design choices when you know how to facilitate.
30. Be cross-culturally competent and understand the needs of a global audience.
31. Be proficient in three areas; instructional design, instructional technology and project management. Like a three-legged stool—if one leg is missing or shorter than the other it is very difficult to remain seated.
Strive for Personal Growth
32. Have humility. This is a trait that many professors lose when they gain tenure. A great instructional designer, like a great teacher, is a servant-leader.
33. Have a passion to impact the lives of people in positive ways through designing suitable learning interventions.
34. Appreciate and value one’s—however small or big it may be—and really believe that someone’s life is getting impacted as a result.
35. Feel ‘powerful’ in helping people become more effective in their personal and professional life and rise to the responsibility of doing that work effectively and to the best of one’s ability.