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Can I find you on Instagram?
It seems as if an exercise teacher can not exist without a social media account. Everyone wants proof of the pudding before they try a class. A perfect class, with everyone performing the perfect combination, beautifully dressed and prepared for the camera. How do I find your pay-per-view? Sorry, no card payment, just pop the money in the tin! Can I try online? Sorry- nope. Not enough room in our house to swing a cat let alone lay a mat down for the cat to lie on! Come to the hall and try it in person. Feel the atmosphere and sense of belonging, the companionship, and the sense of achievement. I will ‘teach’ you step by step, give teaching points, and pick the music according to the class. Do you have a video I can watch to see what it's all about? No, I don't, I do not have a film crew with an editing suite and a magic filter that gives everyone the perfect figure they want. Nor do we rehearse until we get it step perfect; it is living in our muscle memory, not a YouTube clip. My social media feed is flooded with classes for at-home reformer sessions without a reformer to demonstration classes with 3 instructors performing the same routine on a raised platform in a dance studio full to bursting. When watching these clips, I ignore the front rows and watch the participants at the back of the class; more often than not, they are a few steps behind and catch up just as the next movement is cued in. If you are looking for a class, do not assume it does not exist if it isn't online. Search your local halls as there is a world of opportunities, and there will be ‘something’ that ticks your boxes. We work with real bodies - lumps and bumps, shoulders and hips, not a showcase for likes and shares. (By the way- I do not have a cat!) To quote Laura Higgins FCG “A Chair once said to me, "I had no idea a Company Secretary could make this much difference.”
My pathway into governance was by happenstance. As a voluntary company secretary I was mentored by some excellent chairs, and I was fortunate to have excellent training at the Institute of Directors. In addition, the ICSA (now the The Chartered Governance Institute UK & Ireland) Certificate in Charity Management at London South Bank University provided a really good grounding in everything from charity and company finance and law and ‘scanning the horizon’. My greatest achievement was, as a non-accountant, under exam conditions, creating a set of accounts from a 2-page ‘story’. I learned that you do not need a financial brain to understand the accounts- you just need to understand where, why and how the money flows. Company Secretaries are listed at Companies House as officers, making them as important as the Chair and Treasurer, but the role became optional under the Companies Act 2006, and their importance diminished. Anyone can do that- or can they? The skill lies in managing the meeting itself. Getting everyone at the table. The continual meeting cycle of creating an agenda, sending out the minutes, following up on actions and starting all over again. You get into a rhythm, and there is a process. The agenda is the building block of a meeting; the minutes show how, when, and by whom decisions are made and as a legal record, require accuracy and attention to detail. I took the time to understand why people disagree, to see it from their perspective, because good Board members do not try to be awkward on purpose. We then come to implementing the decisions. As a teacher, who these decisions will impact I ask myself 4 simple questions: How will it land? Will everyone understand? Will they know why? How do we make sure the message trickles down without dilution or contamination? In a nutshell: does the person writing the advice know how it will affect the person receiving it? How does this make me a better trustee? The chair knows what needs to be done and included, but it is the secretary who weaves it into an agenda so everyone can participate. I have been told that I ask the questions no one else asks- that is because I am reading between the lines always mindful of how the process will impact the person working with it rather than administering it. Being a Trustee is more than being at the table. It is really about listening, working through the information, and asking questions, and answering emails. The skills I developed as Company Secretary have given me the understanding of how the meeting process works and the bravery to ask questions. My chairing experiences taught me how to draw out questions, create a decision-making pathway, and give ownership. Governance is intriguing—it can be exhausting, meticulous, and rewarding- and when you see people exercising you know that all of the meetings you attended and bits of paper you generated along the way were worth the effort! |
Exercise With TracyEXTEND Exercise and Medau Movement teacher. Keeping the muscles working, the joints mobile and having fun! Archives
March 2026
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