Great Instructional Designers don’t just build courses… they master three powerful habits. 🐒 Most people think Instructional Design is about tools, slides, and authoring software. It’s not. Great instructional designers consistently practice three core behaviors: 👀 See Beyond Spot learning opportunities others miss and design with long-term learning impact in mind. 🎧 Hear Within Understand learner frustrations, motivations, and hidden barriers before designing learning experiences. 📣 Speak to Transform Deliver knowledge in a way that drives behavior change, engagement, and real performance improvement. When these three abilities come together, learning stops being content delivery and becomes transformation. That’s when instructional design, eLearning design, and learning experience design truly create impact. Which one do you think is the most underrated skill in instructional design today? 👇 #instructionaldesign #elearningdesign #learningexperience #learninganddevelopment #elearning
Insightful reflection. As a book strategist and curriculum architect, I resonate most with Hear Within. Deep listening shapes both meaningful narratives and scalable learning journeys. When we truly understand learner intent and friction, content becomes a catalyst for clarity, confidence, and lasting behavior change.
Great framing. To me, the most underrated skill is “Hear Within.” A lot of instructional design still starts with content before it starts with diagnosis. But when we miss learner frustration, context, and hidden barriers, even well-designed learning struggles to transfer into performance. That’s where instructional design stops being course creation and starts becoming learning architecture. Curious to hear where others see the biggest breakdown: before the design, during the experience, or after the learning moment?
One thing I would add: great Instructional Designers also develop a strong ability to simplify complexity. We often read through hundreds of pages of policies, frameworks, expert knowledge and corporate documentation and our real job is to turn all of that into something people can actually understand and apply in their daily work. In a way, we are translators between expert knowledge and practical action. And that skill is often underestimated.
And all these three monkeys exists inside an ID 😀
Thanks for posting this as I think they are really good things for IDs to keep in mind, especially the listening. A lot of us have taken what clients have given us and just created what we "thought" the client wanted. I have learned that if we take the time and listen and ask questions about those necessary items, we can end up learning about what they really need. it can effect how we as designers approach a project. We may have a concept or idea when we are hired but upon actually listening and asking questions that idea might NOT be the best course of action to fulfill the clients needs.This is just my experience and I'd love to hear anyone else's thoughts.