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Importance of knowledge and skills of PM on Instructional Design and Facilitation

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Imran Khurshid PMI-SE Sweden
How essential would you say knowledge and skills on instructional design/facilitation methods are necessary for a Project Manager to have? Besides various Leadership Skills and knowledge of the culture or industry do you think instructional design knowledge and skills are required for a Project Manager to lead his team efficiently?
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Deepesh Rammoorthy ICT Project Manager ( PMP®AgilePM®Certified ScrumMaster® (CSM®))| Australian Red Cross Blood Service Tarneit, Vic, Australia
Hi Imran

Unless the Project Manager is required to deliver structured class room training and Learning Materials in addition to their Project Management Tasks themselves, I don't think Instructional Design methods are all that important .

What I mean here is , I have seen a few jobs in Australia where the PM is required to deliver training and therefore those job descriptions state the need for the PM to undergo or have undergone a formal Certification in Training and Assessment.

However, Facilitation skills are paramount for a Project Manager to have because dealing with Stakeholders and Boards, tailoring and presenting relevant information is the Project Manager's bread and butter.
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Luis Branco CEO| Business Insight, Consultores de Gestão, Ldª Carcavelos, Lisboa, Portugal
Dear Imran
Interesting your question
Thanks for sharing

In my opinion, in order to provide training it is essential to know pedagogy

I agree with Deepesh on: "Facilitation skills are paramount for a Project Manager to have because dealing with Stakeholders and Boards, tailoring and presenting relevant information is the Project Manager's bread and butter"
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Kiron Bondale Retired | Mentor| Retired Welland, Ontario, Canada
Imran -

Deepesh has nailed it. In general, a PM should have good facilitation skills as that competency is frequently called upon, but instructional design and adult learning knowledge are specific technical skills so normally a PM should be working with someone on their team that has those if there is a learning work stream on the project. Of course, as with all other technical skills, if the organization is unable or unwilling to appropriately staff a "whole" team, then other team members (including the PM) might have to step in. This is not usually desirable.

Kiron
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Sergio Luis Conte Helping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based Organizations Buenos Aires, Argentina
Both are critical skills for business analyst but it will help to project managers too. Basically a project manager must facilitate the work of all people engaged to the project. To do that, mainly to push people to follow the defined method and process, instructional skills is a must.
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Keith Novak Tukwila, Wa, United States
I agree with Deepesh. I have had gigs where there was a training phase as part of a product implementation where the product SMEs had to teach the user community, but we relied heavily on education consultants, and the SMEs all got a few days of training. Train the Trainer they called it.

I have had a few times since when I had to train a department on some emergent process change where I didn't have the consultants. I have also found there valuable skills that can be applied elsewhere such as how to develop and deliver effective presentations, but I would not say it is a core skill required for most PMs.
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Aaron Porter
Community Champion
IT Director| Blade HQ Payson, UT, United States
If you're leading meetings, facilitation skills are a "must have" skill. For the most part, you won't need instructional design skills as a project manager.

That being said, I've seen job postings from businesses that provide training where they are looking for PMs with instructional design experience, but this is a very specific use case.
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Suzi MS United Kingdom
Facilitation skill is important, some may not realised we have this already.

Just as well I’ve watch an on-demand presentation earlier related to this. In interesting as the presenters had compared two setting and shared their perspectives on behaviors and outcome. I would recommend you check it out, it’s available on demand here, https://www.projectmanagement.com/videos/5...-Improve-Skills

Hope this helps, Imran!

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