MGMT8270 Leading People and Change
The Complete Study & Assessment Guide · S2 2026MGMT8270 Overview
- Semester 2, 2026
- Research School of Management
- Postgraduate course
- Flipped weekly seminar
- Coursework only
What the course is about
Leading People and Change at the Australian National University is a postgraduate course from the Research School of Management that moves in three blocks: leading yourself, leading others and leading change.
- Assessed by Four coursework tasks: a Video Reflection, a Team Presentation and a Leadership Development Plan at 30% each, and a Development Proposal at 10%.
- Hardest step Integrating course theory into reflection on your own leadership, so that each claim about how you grew is explained by a named model.
- How to prepare Build each task in the seminars that rehearse it, keep a running crucible and values record from Week 1, and draft early.
What you get in the full MGMT8270 Study & Assessment Guide
- 11 chapters, 55 pages — every assessed topic, week by week
- 27 original practice questions, each with a model answer
- 11 worked examples, solved the way MGMT8270 marks
- 17 computed figures, redrawn from the course’s own numbers
- Before-you-submit checklist for the Video Reflection (30%) — what markers reward, what costs marks
Free on this page: assessment table, chapter map, one worked example, key terms, FAQ. The rest is in the full study & assessment guide.
How MGMT8270 is assessed
| Component | Weight | Format |
|---|---|---|
| Video Reflection | 30% | Individual video on how your leader identity has evolved, integrating course theory; due Monday 17 August, 5pm; AI voice generators are not permitted |
| Development Proposal | 10% | Individual 500-word proposal in which you are the subject of the change, laying the groundwork for the Development Plan; due Friday 9 October, 5pm |
| Team Presentation | 30% | Team pitch of a theory-grounded change intervention for a real organisation: 10 minutes plus 10 minutes of questions, marked 24% for the team and 6% for your individual Q&A; in class in Week 12, slides due Monday 26 October, 9am |
| Leadership Development Plan | 30% | Individual plan building on the proposal: self-diagnosis, development priorities, evidence-based actions and review points, in an open format; due Friday 6 November, 5pm |
The four tasks total 100%, and the course states that all assessment is coursework with no exam. Course materials differ on three details: the Video Reflection is described as 8 minutes in the assessment overview and 10 minutes in a Week 4 slide; the Development Plan as a 1,500-word equivalent in the overview and a 2,000-word equivalent in that slide; and teams as four people in the overview and four to five in the slide. Late work on Tasks 1, 2 and 4 costs 5% of the marks on offer for each working day, and nothing more than 10 working days late is accepted; the Team Presentation cannot be submitted late. Check each assignment page on Canvas for the current brief and rubric.
What other students are asking about MGMT8270
- Where can I find lecture notes or study guides for MGMT8270 at ANU?
- The MGMT8270 study guide in AskSia Library covers Leading People and Change in 11 chapters, with the assessment table, a chapter-by-chapter topic map, key terms and a worked example, free to read on this page.
- Is there a final exam in MGMT8270?
- No final exam is listed in the offering this AskSia Library guide is built from; MGMT8270 is assessed by Video Reflection 30%, Development Proposal 10%, Team Presentation 30%, Leadership Development Plan 30%.
- What does MGMT8270 cover on self-awareness, values and place?
- In AskSia Library's MGMT8270 guide, the Self-Awareness, Values and Place chapter explains internal and external self-awareness · Schwartz's four value categories · Kolb's cycle · physical, cultural and political place.
- What does MGMT8270 cover on forming a leader identity?
- In AskSia Library's MGMT8270 guide, the Forming a Leader Identity chapter explains singular, dual and plural identity · best possible leader self · identity circles and maps · intersectionality.
- What does MGMT8270 cover on from trait to transformational leadership?
- In AskSia Library's MGMT8270 guide, the From Trait to Transformational Leadership chapter explains trait and behavioural approaches · the four I's · what a vision does · SBI feedback · critiques.
Current MGMT8270 dates
| Date | Item | Control |
|---|---|---|
| 17 August 2026, 5pm | Video Reflection | Monday of Week 4; individual |
| 9 October 2026, 5pm | Development Proposal | Friday of Week 9; 500 words |
| 26 October 2026, 9am | Team Presentation slides | presentations delivered in class in Week 12 |
| 6 November 2026, 5pm | Leadership Development Plan | Friday after the teaching weeks; individual |
Dates are as published in the Semester 2, 2026 assessment overview on the course site. Confirm exact deadlines and submission settings in the live LMS.
What MGMT8270 covers
Eleven chapters follow the teaching weeks, from how leaders develop and form an identity, through the main theories of leading others, to diagnosing, implementing, communicating and evaluating change.
Leader Development and Crucible Experiences
Born or made · leader emergence · crucible events · What, So what, Now what · three outcome types · horizontal and vertical growthWhy the course starts with you
Week 1 rests the whole semester on one claim: leaders are made, not simply born, so development is worth studying.
- Are leaders born or made?
- Emerging as a leader
- Crucible events and the crucible map
- Speaking about a crucible with What, So what, Now what
- Cognitive, behavioural and affective outcomes
- Horizontal and vertical development
Self-Awareness, Values and Place
Internal and external self-awareness · Schwartz's four value categories · Kolb's cycle · physical, cultural and political placeSeeing yourself accurately
Week 2 treats self-awareness as the foundation of leader development, because a blind spot cannot be improved until it is noticed, while warning that most people think they are more self-aware than they are.
- Why self-awareness comes first
- Internal and external self-awareness
- Turning why questions into what questions
- Schwartz's four value categories
- Rating and debriefing a values profile
- Kolb's experiential learning cycle
Forming a Leader Identity
Singular, dual and plural identity · best possible leader self · identity circles and maps · intersectionalityLeadership as identity
Week 3 moves from what leaders do to who they become.
- Identity and leader identity
- Claimed and granted leader identity
- Singular, dual and plural approaches
- The best possible leader self
- Dual identity circles
- The Twenty Statements Test
From Trait to Transformational Leadership
Trait and behavioural approaches · the four I's · what a vision does · SBI feedback · critiquesThree answers to what leadership is
Week 4 traces leadership theory from traits, through behaviours, to transformational leadership, and asks you to read each theory as a response to the weaknesses of its predecessor.
- The trait approach and its limits
- The behavioural turn
- Transactional and transformational leadership
- The four I's
- What a vision does
- Writing a thirty-second vision speech
Charisma, Political Skill and Influence
Charisma as a signal · charismatic leadership tactics · training evidence · political tactics · political skillCharisma as something you do
Week 5 treats charisma as a leader signal rather than a personality trait: a leader transmits a signal, followers decode it, and only then do they attribute charisma, which raises trust, commitment and motivation.
- Charisma as a leader signal
- Outcomes of attributed charisma
- Framing, substance and delivery tactics
- Evidence that charisma can be trained
- Six political tactics
- Limits of Mintzberg's model
Ethical, Authentic and Servant Leadership
Ethical leadership · five ethical perspectives · authentic leadership and its measure · servant leadership signals · GROW coachingThree moral approaches
Week 6 groups ethical, authentic and servant leadership as moral approaches. Ethical leadership involves ethical discussion, weighing consequences, setting and reinforcing standards, and behaving appropriately for the context.
- Four dimensions of ethical leadership
- Deontology, utilitarianism and relativism
- Virtue ethics and the ethics of care
- Definitions of authentic leadership
- Measuring authentic leadership
- Servant leadership and its dimensions
Understanding and Diagnosing Change
Types of change · models of planned change · ADKAR · stakeholders · action research and Appreciative InquiryWhat change is
Week 7 opens the change half of the course by questioning the Western view of change as episodic, linear and planned, and setting it beside traditions that see change as cyclical, collective or informed by the past.
- Western and other perspectives on change
- Planned and unplanned change
- Developmental, transitional and transformational change
- Material and discursive change
- Lewin's model and ADKAR
- Formal and informal stakeholders
Implementing Change in Organisations
Levels and types of intervention · search conferences · Schein's culture levels · implementation mechanismsDesigning an intervention
Week 8 moves from diagnosis, which asks what, where and why, to intervention, which asks how and when.
- Where, what and how to intervene
- Five levels of intervention
- Human process and human resource interventions
- Technostructural and strategic interventions
- Search conferences
- Schein's three levels of culture
Communicating for Change
Transmission, social construction and dialogic models · five strategy dimensions · rumours during restructuringModels and strategy
Week 9 argues that communicating a change is a set of deliberate, evidence-based choices rather than simply more messages.
- Transmission, social construction and dialogic models
- Top-down, bottom-up and two-way communication
- Internal and external channels
- Five strategy dimensions
- Steps for a communication strategy
- Gossip, rumour and grapevine
Responses and Resistance to Change
Valence and activation · ambivalence · everyday change events · three components of resistance · two perspectivesHow people respond
Week 10 maps responses to change by valence and activation into four kinds: resistance, proactivity, disengagement and acceptance.
- Valence and activation
- Resistance, proactivity, disengagement and acceptance
- Change ambivalence
- Organisational and everyday change events
- Affective, cognitive and behavioural reactions
- Heart, head and hands
Evaluating Change and Learning From Failure
What failure means · responses to failure · pre, intra and post evaluation · evaluators, criteria and methodsWhat failure means
Week 11 starts by retiring the claim that 70% of change efforts fail, which the lecture says is not based on any scientific fact.
- Defining failure in change
- The 70% claim
- Kotter's reasons for failure
- Deterministic, voluntaristic and entrepreneurial views
- Responses to failure
- Pre, intra and postintervention evaluation
It begins with how leaders develop, through crucible experiences, self-awareness, values and the formation of a leader identity. It then examines the evidence on trait, behavioural and transformational leadership, charisma and political skill, and the moral approaches of ethical, authentic and servant leadership.
The final block covers what change is, how to diagnose it, how to design and implement interventions, how to communicate change, how people respond and resist, and how to evaluate change and learn from failure.
How the course is taught
It is a flipped course: each week you work through short videos and readings, then attend an on-campus seminar built around active exercises such as mapping crucibles, rating values, drawing identity maps, coaching with feedback models and mapping stakeholders.
The seminars double as rehearsal for the assessment, so a task is never met cold.
What the assessment rewards
All four tasks are coursework anchored in your own leadership: a Video Reflection on how your leader identity has evolved, a short Development Proposal that treats yourself as the target of a change, a Team Presentation that diagnoses a real organisation and pitches a theory-grounded intervention, and a Leadership Development Plan with priorities, actions, feedback and review points.
The course rewards honest, personal reflection and critique of the research over generic summaries. This guide gives each teaching week its own chapter, with original examples that model the moves each task asks for.
Worked example · free
What a hospital rumour survey tells a change leader
- 1Response rate: 1,610 divided by 3,200 = 0.503, or 50.3%.
- 1Share of respondents reporting a rumour: 776 divided by 1,610 = 0.482, or about 48%, close to half.
- 1Negative rumours outnumber positive ones by 94 to 6, roughly 16 to 1, consistent with people preparing for the worst.
- 1Rumours rise when an issue is important and ambiguous, so the leader should treat them as signals of concern and reduce ambiguity with open, participatory communication rather than suppress them.
Key terms
- Leader Development
- Growth in an individual's capacity to lead, the focus of the course's first block.
- Crucible Map
- A plot of the events that shaped a person's leadership, drawn above or below a line as lived positive or negative.
- Schwartz Values Circle
- A map of human values in which neighbouring values are compatible and opposite values pull against each other.
- Identity Map
- A drawing that places leader identity among a person's other identities, joined by enriching or conflicting links.
- Transformational Leadership
- Leadership that transforms followers through the four I's rather than only exchanging reward for effort.
- Charisma Signal
- The observable behaviour from which followers infer and attribute charisma to a leader.
- Ethical Leadership
- Leadership that discusses ethics, weighs consequences, sets and reinforces standards, and models appropriate conduct.
- Authentic Leadership
- A pattern of leader behaviour built on self-awareness, transparency, an internalised moral perspective and balanced processing.
- Planned Change
- Change that arises from an organisation's intentional efforts rather than from outside or emergent forces.
- Intervention Level
- The scope at which a change intervention acts, from an individual to several organisations.
- Communication Strategy
- The planned set of choices about audiences, messages, framing and channels for communicating a change.
- Resistance to Change
- A negative response to change, read through its affective, cognitive and behavioural components.
- Change Evaluation
- Systematic judgement of a change before, during and after it, against stated criteria.
MGMT8270 FAQ
Is there an exam in Leading People and Change?
No. The assessment overview states that everything in the course is coursework and that there is no exam. The grade comes from four tasks: a Video Reflection, a Development Proposal, a Team Presentation with an individual Q&A, and a Leadership Development Plan, each anchored in your own leadership.
How is the grade split across the four tasks?
The Video Reflection, the Team Presentation and the Leadership Development Plan are worth 30% each, and the Development Proposal 10%. The Team Presentation is divided into 24% for the team presentation and 6% for each student's individual answers in the question time.
What does the Video Reflection ask for?
A video essay tracing how your sense of yourself as a leader has shifted, built around key turning points and explained with course theory. Your face must be visible throughout, your student ID shown at the start, and AI voice generators are not allowed.
What goes into the Development Proposal?
A 500-word proposal in which you are the subject of the change: one development focus and why it matters, evidence about yourself, two or three theories or models, and an initial idea of how you would know it worked. Words beyond 500 are not marked.
How does the Team Presentation work?
Your team analyses a real organisation needing substantial change and pitches a theory-grounded intervention covering diagnosis, the intervention plan, communication, managing responses and ethics. It runs for 10 minutes plus 10 minutes of questions, live in class in Week 12.
What should the Leadership Development Plan include?
A diagnosis of your current leadership, two to four development priorities with concrete, evidence-based actions, feedback mechanisms, and indicators of progress with clear review points, supported by both leadership and change theory. The format is open, from a written report to a visual plan.
What happens if I submit late or need an extension?
Ask for an extension in writing through ANUHub no later than the deadline. Late individual work costs 5% of the marks on offer for each working day, and work more than 10 working days late is not taken; the live Team Presentation cannot be submitted late.
Questions students ask in each MGMT8270 chapter
- What is a crucible event in leadership development?
- It is a demanding experience, often a setback, that forces someone to change and becomes a source of leadership learning once they make sense of it. The course stresses the sense-making: living through a trial is not enough on its own. Chapter 01 · Leader Development and Crucible Experiences
- Why does self-awareness matter so much for leaders?
- It is among the best predictors of how well people lead, and it is the starting point for development because weaknesses you cannot see cannot be worked on. The difficulty is that most people overestimate how self-aware they are. Chapter 02 · Self-Awareness, Values and Place
- What does it mean that others must grant a leader identity?
- Seeing yourself as a leader is only half of it; followers, colleagues and others must also accept you in that role. Because they grant it more readily to some people than others, two equally capable people can have very different experiences. Chapter 03 · Forming a Leader Identity
- What are the four I's of transformational leadership?
- Individualised consideration, idealised influence, intellectual stimulation and inspirational motivation: attending to followers' needs, role-modelling, challenging assumptions, and articulating an inspiring vision. The course uses them to map real leaders and frameworks. Chapter 04 · From Trait to Transformational Leadership
- Can charisma actually be learned?
- The course presents evidence that it can. Trained MBA students doubled their use of charismatic tactics in the same speech, observers rated them as more leader-like, and a field experiment found a charismatic speech raised workers' output without any change in pay. Chapter 05 · Charisma, Political Skill and Influence
- What is the difference between ethical, authentic and servant leadership?
- In the seminar's summary, ethical leadership is guided by the norms of the group, authentic leadership by your own moral compass, and servant leadership by the needs of those affected. All three share an ethical core. Chapter 06 · Ethical, Authentic and Servant Leadership
- What is Lewin's change model?
- A three-stage model: unfreeze, by making sure people are ready for change; change, by carrying out the intended change; and refreeze, by making the change permanent. The course notes that it is not iterative, while real implementation usually loops back. Chapter 07 · Understanding and Diagnosing Change
- What are the four types of change intervention?
- Human process interventions improve how people work together; human resource interventions align skills, motivation and roles; technostructural interventions change structure and workflows; and strategic interventions align strategy with the environment and the organisation's capabilities. Chapter 08 · Implementing Change in Organisations
- What are the three models of change communication?
- The transmission model sends information one way and judges success by clarity. The social construction model treats communication as shaping the organisation's reality through everyday interaction. The dialogic model brings many voices into ongoing engagement. Chapter 09 · Communicating for Change
- What are the four types of response to change?
- Plotting valence against activation gives resistance (negative, high energy), proactivity (positive, high energy), disengagement (negative, low energy) and acceptance (positive, low energy). The grid helps leaders notice quiet disengagement as well as loud resistance. Chapter 10 · Responses and Resistance to Change
- Do 70% of change efforts really fail?
- The lecture says the figure is not based on any scientific fact, and the module calls it folklore. Measuring failure is hard because outcomes are ambiguous, stakeholders disagree, and a single initiative is rarely isolated from everything else happening. Chapter 11 · Evaluating Change and Learning From Failure
How to prepare for the assessments
Treat the semester as one continuous build rather than four separate tasks. From Week 1, keep a running record: your crucible map, your values profile, your identity map and your political skill profile, because together they are the evidence base for the Video Reflection, the proposal and the plan.
For each framework the course introduces, write one paragraph applying it to yourself and one applying it to an organisation you know, which rehearses both the personal tasks and the Team Presentation. When you cite a theory, add one sentence on its limits, since the course rewards weighing research over summarising it.
Draft early and use the seminars, where each task is rehearsed in miniature: speaking practice for the video, coaching for the plan, and live questions for the presentation's individual Q&A. Finally, write your review points before you start acting on your development priorities, so the plan can show progress rather than intention.
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