NGA

Emma Balchin

Senior Leadership Programme

Emma Balchin is a Director of PD at NGA

NGA is an education sector charity who provide support for school and trust governance. They are largely a membership organisation with over 70% of schools in the country engaging with our services in one way or the other. Emma's arm in the organisation offers training, consultancy and eLearning to governors and trustees about undertaking the role and carrying out the various required functions effectively. 

Emma stated that her learning objectives and challenges were to get her head back into the strategic leadership space, to find the time and capacity to stop doing the day job and step back and think about the overarching aims of the business and how best to achieve them, bringing teams, and members along with her. Also her aim was to refresh and upgrade learning from a CMI Level 5 course that she undertook about 15 years ago. 

After taking the course Emma said that she really enjoyed the 4 days that she spent learning valuable skills for her role. Emma commented that the 4 days she spent on the course were really enjoyable and very beneficial to her role. 

Emma said that the training she recieved has enabled her to take a step back and think about how it applies to her team and will apply to the organisation going forward. She also said that she is looking forward to undertaking the assignment to actually force herself to try and apply the learning to the business context – as it is so easy to get caught back up into tasks she always did.

She also stated that she needs to make time to think strategically and plan accordingly – and also for the task of leading/managing people.