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TU Dublin’s Graduate Business School: equipping leaders for success

Dr. Colin Hughes, head of TU Dublin’s Graduate Business School discusses the changing face of leadership education and how they work with partners to develop leadership capability within organisations

TU Dublin executive MBA students

Thu Dec 21 2023 - 06:00

How important is leadership education?

Every day, we get to witness leaders in a variety of settings, from politics, to sport and business, and within the organisations in which we work, who demonstrate high levels of competence and integrity. However, sadly many leaders fall far short of our expectations. The reality is that leadership is difficult, and many leaders are simply unsuited or underprepared for the challenge. Given the pace of modern work, people are often fast-tracked from technical roles into people leadership roles, and they soon find out that a completely different skill set is required. That is where education can prove vital.

What sort of leadership courses do you offer?

Within the Graduate Business School, we understand that current and aspiring leaders have varying needs and that the way in which people learn has changed. After Covid, we realised that we needed to offer a more flexible menu of leadership education. We introduced a free expert seminar series and new short courses to allow people to sample leadership content or to keep abreast of leadership trends in areas including sustainability and emerging technologies. We developed Postgraduate Certificate awards which can be taken over an 8 month period, and we redesigned many of our part-time MSc and MBA programmes.

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How do you ensure that your programmes stay relevant for modern leaders?

We co-design all of our programmes with industry partners and our alumni. In fact, the majority of our part-time leadership programmes are run in partnership with industry bodies such as the Institute of Advertising Practitioners in Ireland, Marketing Institute Ireland and Ibec, along with Technology Ireland DIGITAL and ICT Skillnets. We also work with leading Irish and International organisations who are committed to equipping their leaders for success. We design and tailor programmes for leaders at all levels, from emerging leaders to seasoned executives. In the past year we have designed impactful leadership programmes for various partners, including Workday, Version 1, and Sky. TU Dublin’s partnership office and our HEA Human Capital Initiative-funded Enterprise Academy engage with employers to gain an understanding of their unique needs. Their insights are invaluable to us as we partner to design both intradisciplinary and multidisciplinary programmes.

Leaders’ roles are increasingly demanding, is leadership education changing to reflect this?

There are certain fundamentals which have not changed significantly. For instance, we place a lot of emphasis on enhancing self-awareness, often using psychometric tools with one-to-one feedback. We focus on building emotional and cultural intelligence and helping leaders to develop a reflective mindset. While there is no single model of effective leadership, we introduce learners to a wide range of leadership theories and encourage them to reflect on their experience of leadership, good and bad, and support them to shape their own style.

We recently developed our own evidence-based framework which we use to design leadership programmes. This has proved invaluable in designing comprehensive programmes that meet the needs of a specific audience. For instance, some partners may wish to focus on high-performance teams or leader effectiveness, while others want their leaders to enhance their strategic thinking or communication and influencing skills.

While some topics are evergreen, there has been an increased interest in developing coaching skills in leaders and the ability to actively manage diversity, equity and inclusion. Post Covid there has also been an increased interest in areas such as virtual leadership and on improving leaders’ wellbeing and strengthening their resilience – it has been a challenging time for many leaders!

What new areas have the Graduate Business School focused on recently? There are probably three key areas. Firstly. as many Irish and international organisations have huge scaling ambitions, they need leaders who are capable of delivering growth. Recently, we worked with our GROWTHhub unit, a HEA Human Capital Initiative funded project focused on building growth thinking and entrepreneurial behaviour, to develop courses in entrepreneurial leadership. These are specifically targeted at leaders in organisations that are scaling and have proven to be extremely effective in developing strategic and entrepreneurial mindsets.

Secondly, given the speed of technological development, we developed a 6 week Emerging Technologies and Digital Transformation series on our Executive MBA, along with a springboard funded Postgraduate Certificate in Digital Leadership and Transformation, and a Digital Transformation programme with DIGITAL Skillnet.

Thirdly. to support leaders in tackling sustainability challenges, we have developed a range of Sustainability Leadership modules and programmes including a Hack for Sustainability module on our Executive MBA and a programme in Global Sustainability Leadership with the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR).

Do you focus on any specific professions or sectors?

Many of our programmes are open to leaders from every sector. However, over the years we have also focused on developing leadership capability in specific professions or sectors. For instance, we are a leader in sales education and thousands of sales managers and leaders have studied with us. The same goes for our award-winning Product Management programmes run in partnership with DIGITAL Skillnet, our Global Business Services leadership development programmes with Technology Ireland Skillnet, and our Retail Management programmes with partners such as Musgrave. Lately we have developed a new MBA in LifeSciences Leadership in partnership with our School of Chemical and BioPharmacuetical Sciences, which we believe will have a real impact in delivering leadership capacity in the thriving LifeSciences sector.

What will you focus on in 2024?

We will launch our Global Sustainability Leadership Programme with UNITAR in quarter one, along with a new sales leadership programme. We have numerous programmes in design with partners which will also launch, along with a new portfolio of micro-credentials. It will be another busy year!

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