What I Wish I Knew Before Becoming an Instructional Design Manager
Have you hit your ceiling as an instructional designer?
If yes, your next path could be transitioning from an individual contributor to an instructional design manager. Instead of designing learning experiences, you’ll lead the team responsible for this and under your guidance, they can truly grow.
Sounds appealing, right? I’m with you. When I moved into a leadership position, I couldn’t wait to build the ID dream team.
I would find the best learning nerds, people obsessed with instructional design and passionate about creating outstanding learning experiences. I pictured us holding weekly meetings to discuss the latest research, reviewing books, and brainstorming what to try next. But when this move happened, I found myself in uncharted waters. The job was nothing like I expected.
Where my team needed help was with people and project management like:
When a professor cancels a filming session four times in a row, how do you get them back on track?
When a project looks like it’s going to go over budget, how do you cut costs without sacrificing quality?
When a SME unexpectedly quits, what do you do next?
Your priority is still on the learning experience, but it takes an entirely new shape.
I shared these thoughts the other day on LinkedIn, and I didn’t realize how many of you were in this same position. You’re transitioning now into a leadership role or you’ve been a manager and the job is proving to be quite a challenge. I’ve found that leadership books and resources can be quite vague and not go into the nitty gritty.
So hey, let me help you out by giving specific advice on managing instructional designers and what not to do. Here are my top five blunders you can learn from!
Lesson 1: Different Work Styles Require Different Management Styles
Obvious statement is obvious, but this was so hard for me to wrap my mind around. As an instructional designer, I’ll admit I’m a bit of an oddball. In grad school, one of my public speaking professors called me quirky and confident, while another one described me as an eccentric gameshow host. I don't think these qualities come to mind as a normal instructional designer. With this said, when it came to building out my team, I knew exactly what I wanted in candidates: people who didn’t think like me.
As a designer, I'm a creative. I have no problem coming up with ideas and then getting buy-in from stakeholders. However, it's a challenge for me to see the tiny details. I get motivated and run with the idea, but forget to follow through on the little things. For these reasons, I wanted to surround myself with folks who were careful, detailed oriented, organized, data obsessed, and followed processes to the letter. The team I wanted to build needed to be balanced.
Here’s what I didn’t expect though and looking back on this, it was staring at me in the face. Since my team members work differently than I do, they also want to be managed differently. Take one-on-ones, for example. As an individual contributor, I never found them that helpful. If something came up that I needed to either inform my director about or I truly needed guidance, I picked up the phone and called her. That’s my style. My team, on the other hand, loves one-on-ones. They value those regular check-ins to discuss project progress and next steps. They also appreciate the space to talk about their professional growth and brainstorming. They love having a logbook to document what we discussed and can refer back to at any time.
I’ll be honest, this took some getting used to. My director and I cancelled our recurring one-on-ones because of a holiday and we forgot about them completely for months. So, that's where my headspace was at. For my team, I had to become more methodical. I started mapping out agendas, preparing discussion points, reviewing team updates, and asking how I could better support them. All of this was new to me as a first-time manager.
Managing a team has pushed me to grow by considering other perspectives and angles I hadn’t thought about before. I knew how to manage like-minded people. I didn't know how to manage everyone else.
Lesson 2: People Are Willing to Forgive and Forget
When you become a leader, you want to be right all the time. You want to be seen as the go-to person who can solve any problem. The truth is, you’re going to screw up. You’re new to leadership. It’s inevitable. And when it happens, it’ll feel awful. You’ll feel like you let your team down due to carelessness or an oversight.
But here’s the thing: it’s usually not as big a deal as you think. Your team knows you’re new and is often more than willing to forgive and forget.
I remember one time I completely spaced when performance reviews were due. I thought we had several weeks. It turned out we had just a few days. And let’s be honest—no one loves doing rushed performance reviews on top of other projects. I mean no one loves doing performance reviews period... I admitted I messed up and felt terrible about it. But my team understood, and we got it done. The next time performance reviews came around, I was on top of it. It never happened again.
What I found to be helpful was to be honest with my team in saying that either I didn’t have an answer and I’ll get back to them or if I made a mistake, owning it, and trying to figure the solution.
Lesson 3: Share Your Mistakes to Build Trust
Speaking of mistakes, most leaders don’t talk about their blunders. Maybe it’s embarrassing, or they worry their team will view them in a negative light. But I’ve realized how valuable it is to share those moments.
Once, one of my IDs was really nervous to bring up a mistake. The project had gone off the rails, and they spent a lot of time thinking about how to tell me. During our one-on-one, they nervously brought it up, and I said, “Oh, that? I’ve done that plenty of times. Here’s how we can fix it.”
Their response: “I thought I was the first one to make this mistake...”
I was stunned to hear that and also really surprised by how much they festered on this issue. Things happen. It’s very, very rare that something becomes unfixable. That moment, and others, helped me see the value of being relatable. Sharing my own past mistakes made me more approachable, and now my team seems more comfortable bringing issues to me early on.
Lesson 4: Transparency Requires Discernment
By nature, I’m a direct and transparent person. I like hearing the full picture—the good and the bad—so I can figure out what to do next. Because of that, there’s always a voice in my head telling me to be fully transparent with my team. Holding back information feels uncomfortable, but I understand why some managers do it.
To give you an example, I heard a rumor in the senior leadership circle that would’ve potentially impacted the instructional design team. Not even giving it a second thought, I shared the rumor during an upcoming team meeting and then immediately regretted it. A part of me was openly venting about the rumor and how it was going to disrupt our workflow, but I knew it was just a rumor. There was the high likelihood that none of this was going to happen and I was blowing off steam. I thought the team was going to interpret the information in the same way, and instead, it got really awkward and quiet. It was like well… that’s not good.
I tried to walk it back, but the damage was done. What I should have done first was gather more information, talk to colleagues, and plan next steps. I acted on impulse. In the moment, I thought I was being transparent, but really, I was oversharing information and feeding into a rumor. Oh, by the way, the rumor never came true, and I scared my team for no reason. Super fun!
There’s a time and place to share. There’s also tremendous value in waiting, collecting the facts, and strategically deciding how to move forward. Not everything needs to be handled right away.
Lesson 5: Build a Support Network of Fellow Managers
Have you ever faced a situation where you had absolutely no idea what to do? Like, not even the slightest clue? That happened to me when a member of my team had a disagreement with someone on another team. Both of them had valid points, and neither wanted to back down. The vibe around the office was awkward because of this and I truly wasn’t sure how to make this right.
So, I talked to my director, and her advice was helpful, but something still felt missing. Then, by chance, I ran into a friend at work who manages a completely different team at MIT. I figured, why not ask him? I said, "If someone from another team had a disagreement with yours and it needed to be solved ASAP, what would you do?" Turns out, he dealt with a similar situation just last month and shared what he learned from the process.
If I had never talked to him, I’m pretty sure I would still be thinking about what to do. That experience taught me how I needed to connect with fellow managers on my level. The understood exactly where I was coming from and as I had just learned, gone through some of these same challenges. You need to form these connections though to hear any of this advice. Whether it’s a monthly standup, a Slack channel, or casual conversations, you need to build out this network of fellow managers.
These are just a few of the things I’ve learned so far. I don’t have all the answers, and I’m still figuring things out as I go. If you’ve picked up a helpful tip in your own journey, feel free to drop it in the comments for other ID managers!
