Dr. Chris Show

To get projects done and be effective leaders need to have the ability to motivate others. And while it's tempting to think in the carrot & stick mindset of the transactional leader and just offer performance bonuses. Those aren't as effective as we'd wish.

Once people are paid enough that they aren't worrying about money, money itself stops being a very effective motivation. Instead, there are the "Big Three" Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose. These are covered in more detail in a great book by Daniel Pink called "Drive" which I recommend but essentially if you ensure the team knows the work they are doing is important, help them become better at their craft, and then stay out of the way. Chances are they will be more motivated to get the work done.

And while there are tons of specific items that motivate people essentially it's our Values that drive our behavior. So being able to identify what people value and playing on their strengths is another effective way to motivate people.

I recommend The VIA Character Strengths Survey as an excellent way to articulate your own values and to give some insight into how you might identify the values of others, not necessarily having them take the survey but in general as a way to consider values. The survey can be found at this URL https://www.viacharacter.org/survey/account/register

Out of all of the models of leadership, I find that servant leadership is the one that I resonate with most, and also the one I think resonates with most instructional designers. And that's because we tend to have a "natural desire to serve others."

This natural desire to serve others is at the core of servant leadership. And although in all of the research and all of the studies people come up with many attributes and characteristics, in the end, it boils down to that core.

Essentially with servant leadership, you have a leader whose focus is on serving the needs of the team. I like to think of this as clearing the path of obstacles and helping people on the team find what they are looking for both at work and in their wider lives. Much like was described in transformational leadership this sets an example for the whole team who then see service to others as something to emulate.

With everyone focused on helping others, everything then turns out to be that much easier.

There are many leadership styles worth looking deeper at and trying to emulate. Two of them are the Transformational Leadership style and the Situational Leadership style.

Transformational leadership is when a leader identifies a need for change and brings that change about through inspiration. And there are four components that we can work on if we want to be transformational leaders.

1. Intellectual stimulation: transformational leaders challenge their team to challenge the status quo through creativity and innovation.

2. Individualized consideration: transformational leaders demonstrate that they care about their team members.

3. Inspirational motivation: transformational leaders clearly establish and communicate an inspirational vision.

4. Idealized influence: transformational leaders "walk the walk" which builds trust and credibility by demonstrating both belief in the vision but the behaviors that will lead to the vision.

Situational Leadership acknowledges that like so much in life our particular leadership styles will depend on the situation and who we're trying to lead.

The formal leadership theory described four maturity levels and how to address them but essentially the concept is that a leader will approach a novice differently then they will an expert and the specific style of leadership should adjust from explicitly telling a novice what to do and how to do a task to simply delegating a task to an expert.

There are a variety of leadership models and two of the important ones to know about early and to know the descriptions of are the laissez-faire model of leadership and the transactional model of leadership. They both have their place but are best left to small scale or short term situations.

The laissez-faire model of leadership is quite literally a "hands-off" approach where the person in charge of the situation just does nothing. And while I don't advocate this model of leadership for instructional designers it can be advantageous for "go-getters" to find themselves in since if you are part of a project with a laissez-faire leader it can be an opportunity for you to step up and try your hand at leadership within the vacuum. It is also a style I don't judge. There are often very real reasons why someone in a leadership role takes a step back.

The transactional model of leadership is almost a "Behaviorist" style of leadership with a focus on rewards and punishments. And like the behaviorist approach to learning it can work in the short term and it can work on lower-level tasks. But again not something to focus on long term.

Instructional designers often find themselves in leadership roles, even if they don't have any formal authority in projects or situations they have an opportunity to truly be effective leaders.

But there are some fallacies about leadership. First that people are "Born Natural Leaders" and second that Charisma has something to do with leadership.

Effective leadership mostly has to do with: Providing a compelling vision, setting and communicating clear goals, and developing a healthy working culture.

When you put it that way instructional designers sound like they can be great leaders.

There are however a few traits that we can work on to boost our success. Luckily they aren't traits you need to be born with. There was a great video produced by The Blue Water Partnership that outlines the seven traits that show up most often in leadership research.

1. enthusiasm

2. fairness

3. toughness

4. humility

5. warmth

6. integrity

7. confidence

When I was in school I had limited leadership training, which was a bit unfortunate because of the importance for instructional designers to be leaders in their organizations. Most of the training I received was simply either on project management or some light interpersonal items.

For me, I find that some of the traits that help instructional are technical competence, emotional intelligence, tact, and not only trustworthy but being trusted.

I wanted to spend some time exploring the IDs role as a leader and how some of what we know about what makes a good leader can help instructional designers in this effort. Both some of the big ideas and the practical ways that we can improve our leadership skills.

I've been frustrated with Adobe Flash since before it was Macromedia Flash. And now that we're finally looking like it might just go away with the imminent death of the Flash Player in December of 2020 that leaves a WHOLE lot of flash-based training that needs to be dealt with.

After I spent part of my morning fighting with Chrome to play some ancient flash based training I did some poking around and found a tool I want to share https://swf-decompiler.org has a nifty app that will convert the SWF file back into an FLA file which will open in Adobe "Flash" Animate.

Depending on what you have for an SWF file it may be possible to then just convert the workspace to an HTML5 workspace and export. For more complex projects the SWF-Decompiler will break down all of the elements in the SWF file and export them nice and organized so that you can use them to rebuild whatever it is you need to rebuild.

Not the cleanest solution but one that looks promising. What has everyone else been doing for conversions of Flash to HTML5?

(Link to full video in bio)

When a project goes well and everyone is happy there are still several critical things to do.

These involve closing out any accounts that are project-specific, especially internal budget line items that can easily be forgotten, getting an official sign off that the project is complete and the product delivered, collecting feedback both internal and external, and most importantly the PARTY!

And I'm serious about the party, even a small ritual such as donuts or pizza helps to close out a project emotionally and build a sense of community and teamwork that helps with future projects.

What are the key steps in executing a well-planned project in instructional design? For me they are keeping a tight view and control over the "Critical Path" that we talked about yesterday, ensuring there are formal signoffs and approvals for changes to the scope of the project, and ensuring that everyone is well informed and on the same page.

One of the more critical planning steps in project planning is scheduling the individual project tasks.

A big reason for this is that there are so many moving pieces. Deadlines, availability, and everyone's favorite "The Critical Path" or "the hunt for what's making this take so long"

I often describe project schedule as a messed up game of Tetris and in this video, you'll find out why.