BUU44701 Managing People and Leading Change 2025/26

(5 ECTS)

Lecturer: Professor Amanda Shantz  

Email: shantza@tcd.ie 

Office Hours: By appointment (please email to arrange)

Available to Exchange students 

Module Description

This module is designed to help you to become the leader who you aspire to be. Through a powerful mix of self-awareness exercises, reflective practices, simulations, and peer feedback, you'll explore and articulate your core purpose, understand how to navigate challenges and opportunities, and develop a clear personal leadership vision. The course emphasizes essential leadership skills such as team management, inspiring others, and giving and receiving feedback. By engaging in ongoing reflection, you'll be on your way to unlock your full leadership potential and become more visionary, authentic, and impactful.

Learning and Teaching Approach

• Effective leaders do not become effective by reading articles and books. Instead, they develop their ability and motivation to lead through reflection, action, and peer discussion. You need to take ownership over your own leadership development during this term by ensuring that you make it a regular practice to complete your pre-work, to discuss with your colleagues, and to come to class ready to engage. This class isn’t about theory, it’s about you.
• You are encouraged to keep a learning journal. Since reflection is key to achieving the learning outcomes and to your performance in this module, you should keep a journal throughout this semester. This will support your ongoing development, and help you for assessments.
• Some of the preparatory work invites you to complete particular tasks. These tasks are meant to support your leadership development. You are not required to upload evidence that you have completed these tasks into Blackboard, and even if you do, you will not receive feedback on them. However, we may use the tasks in class to form part of a discussion or exercise, and if you have not completed yours, you distract from the learning of your peers. Further, as you will read later in this document, you will sit two in-class tests, which may ask you about these tasks. For instance, in one task, you are asked to Interview a Leader. In class, you will be asked to share your findings from this interview with others. On the test, you might be asked to integrate and share what you have learned from that discussion.
• Some of the preparatory readings are integrated into the 'Harvard Manage Mentor' online learning modules. These feature interactive exercises and case studies drawn from real-world scenarios. You'll also benefit from insightful commentary and videos featuring faculty from top business schools and industry experts. All Manage Mentors can be accessed on Blackboard, so please be sure to complete them prior to our class. Set aside about 2-3 hours for each online module. In Manage Mentor, there are Editor Choice Resources (these are PDF documents) that are recommended, but not required reading. However, the other information in the online learning modules will be integrated into our class discussions, and you will be required to engage with these materials as part of your assessment.
• We run two simulations in this module. Simulations provide students with hands-on experience in managing business situations without the risks associated with real-life decision-making. This experiential learning helps students understand complex concepts in a safe environment. The simulations are run in during class (see schedule) and will begin 30 minutes early, without exception (i.e. 8.30am). Please be on time and come prepared with a laptop computer.

Learning Outcomes

1. Demonstrate enhanced self-awareness and clarity of personal leadership purpose. 
2. Develop practical strategies for navigating challenges and leveraging opportunities to develop one’s leadership skills. 
3. Cultivate skills in leading individuals, team management, and delivering feedback to inspire and support others. 
4. Identify areas for personal and professional development to improve one’s leadership skills and/or find purpose.
5. Recognize the value in reflective writing for developing one’s leadership potential.

Workload

Textbooks and Required Resources

Required core course textbook

There is no required textbook for this course.

General Readings

Reading will be provided on Blackboard to students.

Student Preparation for the Module

To make the most of out of this module, please come to class prepared with the pre-work. Lecture slides are posted in advance of each class, but there are likely heaps of things that we will discuss that I cannot anticipate and so are not in the slides. This means that you should bring either your laptop or a pen/paper to class with you.

Course Communication

Communication will be through the course Blackboard site: http://mymodule.tcd.ie

Students must ensure that they check their college email and visit the Blackboard course site regularly. Notifications of the course will be posted on Blackboard.

Please note that all course related email communication must be sent from your official TCD email address. Emails sent from other addresses will not be responded to.

Assessment

This class recognizes and leverages the power of reflection for developing your leadership skills. A reflective paper is not one that regurgitates facts and figures, nor is it a platform for self-promotion. Instead, reflection gives you space to think about things, their impact on you, and your behaviour and relationships with others.

You will be afforded with two opportunities to document the ongoing reflections that you are encouraged to write throughout this semester. These two opportunities are in-class, timed ‘tests’ where you have no access to external resources.

There are sample questions on Blackboard along with more guidance. You’ll see that answering these reflective questions is not straightforward, and becomes quite difficult if you have not given some thought to your experiences and readings in advance. When looking at your answers to these ‘tests’, we will primarily be looking at depth of reflective thought, and this can only come after accumulated thinking and discussing over time.

The first in-class test will be related to material/reflections covered in the first five weeks, and the second is related to material covered over the entire semester.

The first in-class test is worth 40% of the overall grade; the second test is worth 60%. See the dates below for these tests.

Biographical Note

Amanda Shantz is a Professor of Responsible Leadership and Director of the Executive MBA at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. She holds a PhD from the University of Toronto, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and a BA Hons from McGill University. Her research focuses on how organizations leverage human talent to achieve high levels of success, while at the same time, ensure that they make a positive impact in the communities in which they operate. Amanda publishes her research in top academic and practitioner journals, and she has won several awards for her work.

For over 15 years, Amanda has been at the forefront of delivering high-quality leadership development programmes to students, managers, and executives. Her areas of expertise include self-leadership, managing people and teams to nurture talent and engagement. Amanda's real passion lies in unlocking the leadership potential in others. She has had the privilege of doing so as a faculty member of several Executive MBA and MBA programmes, and in her prior roles as Director of the University of St Gallen MBA (2021-2025), and Director of Trinity College’s MBA and Executive MBA (2018-2021). Amanda is also highly engaged with practice, with a broad and diverse consulting portfolio. She has worked with clients across various sectors including energy, healthcare, insurance/finance, automotive, and manufacturing across Europe.