Instructional Design Lessons from the World of Theatre

For more than a decade in the late part of the last century (I get a kick out of saying that) my life was theatre. During that period, I completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Acting and a Master of Fine Arts degree in Directing for the stage. I acted in and/or directed over 75 plays, in both academic and professional theatres in the Midwest and on the west coast, won awards in both disciplines, taught classes, and was moderately successful at supporting myself in a very tough industry.

Alas, while I loved the theatre and this part of my life, a point came when I was no longer happy with the financial return on my investments of  time and creativity. The stability and salary of a “regular” job became more appealing and I quickly found myself employed by a consulting firm focused on SAP training and change management, while still doing some theatre on the side of course.

As I started this new career, almost 16 years ago now, I knew I had strong organizational and communication skills and a strong grasp on what motivates people. What I didn’t realize was how well my theatre training would serve me in the world of consulting and instructional design for corporate training projects. I’d like to share a few of those lessons with you here.

Lesson 1 – Active Listening

Just about any actor will tell you that learning lines is only a small part of what he or she does to rehearse and perform a role. Active listening is arguably a much more important skill, and one that does not come naturally to many people. It has to be learned. You see, an actor that is not actively listening and reacting to others in a scene is simply waiting for his or her turn to deliver lines. They are not invested in the scene or connected to their fellow actors. In short, no one wants to watch that!

But what is active listening? A quote from Mind Tools sums it up pretty well:

[Active listening] is where you make a conscious effort to hear not only the words that another person is saying but, more importantly, try to understand the complete message being sent.In order to do this you must pay attention to the other person very carefully. You cannot allow yourself to become distracted by whatever else may be going on around you, or by forming counter arguments that you’ll make when the other person stops speaking. Nor can you allow yourself to get bored, and lose focus on what the other person is saying. All of these contribute to a lack of listening and understanding.

So how does active listening relate to instructional design? There are many ways, in my opinion, but first and foremost is communicating with your subject matter experts (SMEs). When you have been designing instructional programs for awhile, it is easy to start making assumptions about your client’s needs. We all know where making assumptions can leave us…digging out from under a pile of useless training materials. Employing active listening when communicating with SMEs and project sponsors is one of the the best ways to ensure that your design takes into account the needs, attitudes, and special challenges of each client. It helps you avoid falling into a “one size fits all” design approach and does wonders for client acceptance of your ideas.

Lesson 2 – Don’t leave any fingerprints

As a directing student, one of my mentors was fond of reminding us “not to leave any fingerprints” on our productions. Here’s where she was going with that piece of advice; theatre, much like business, is a collaborative art. The moment one person’s vision or preferences are placed above all other input, bad things happen. You start to move from collaboration to a dictatorship and the production (or design project) WILL suffer for it. This is not to say that leadership is not required. Rather, this lesson has taught me that good directors and good instructional designers do not insist on keeping something in a project just because they like it. Instead, elements are kept or cut based on how well they relate to the goals of the project as a whole.

To apply this principle to your own work, continually ask yourself this question: “Is this good for the project as a whole?” If the answer is no, you are probably leaving some fingerprints where you shouldn’t.

Lesson 3 – If you can’t build it right, build it stout

 Technical theatre, consisting of sets, costumes, props, lighting and sound, is all about creating a believable environment for the production from the perspective of the audience. If you were to walk behind the action happening on stage, you would see that what looks like a solid wall from the front is actually made from muslin on a wood frame, a bolder is created from paper mache and chicken wire, and the cobblestone floor is simply a paint treatment.  Just like an instructional design project with limited budget and resources, technical theatre pros are constantly on the lookout for ways to create something great out of very little.

I worked for a summer stock theatre one year where the scene shop foreman had come to the profession by way of a background in new home construction. He was also very safety conscience. It was his job to interpret the scenic design plans and supervise the construction of the set. When asked questions like “should I use 1×2 or 2×4 to build this XYZ thing?”, he would check the design, see no recommendation, sigh and say “If you can’t build it right, build it stout.”  What he meant by that was use the stronger, better, safer 2×4 for the frame.

You see, first he knew how he would build that XYZ thing in the real (perfect) world of home construction. Second he knew that XYZ thing building for a set was not about long lasting results. It is about making it look realistic in the context of the set and safe for the actors, without costing too much. Third, he knew that there were things he didn’t know. Like whether there would be one actor standing on XYZ thing or 6 actors dancing on it. And the moral of the story is when the plan does not tell you what to do in a certain situation, err on the side of caution…in short, build it stout.

From an instructional design perspective, I use this principle all the time when I have to make judgement calls about what to cut or redesign in a training development plan due to time or budget constraints. When I can’t build what I see as the “perfect” solution for an instructional design problem because time or money is short, I try to build the best, most robust approximation I can within those constraints.  In this case, safety messages have priority over nice to know information and “pretty” is secondary to functional and accurate. If I can’t build the perfect solution, I build a stout solution.

What about you? What lessons did you learn in a previous career that have translated to your current one? I’d love to hear your thoughts.