The real Executive MBA payoff: Self trust and the freedom to make bold choices

The definitive moment of Emma Orman’s Executive MBA programme at Henley Business School wasn’t when she crossed the stage in September 2024 to graduate with distinction, or even when she received an Exceptional Achievement Award; it was the moment she realised that she no longer needed external validation.

‘I went to the Henley campus one day and someone said to me: “You’ve changed”,’ she recalls. ‘He said, “you seem lighter and more confident”.’ As nice as it was to hear that, she realised ‘all of a sudden’ that she didn’t need that kind of validation anymore. ‘That is when I saw how the theory I was learning around personal development was becoming real; I was living out everything that I had learnt during the workshops and classes.’

Emma, who at that point was the Chief Operating Officer at London Gynaecology, says that this shift – from looking outward for approval to believing in herself – was for her the core value proposition of the MBA, and that it has fundamentally changed her career trajectory: still moving up, but on her own terms.

Of course, she says she gained a lot from the individual business disciplines modules, but it was the self-development, through Henley’s legendary Personal Development work with Prof. Chris Dalton, that she thinks really accelerated her professional journey.

After more than a decade rising through the ranks in the healthcare sector, Emma had decided it was the right time to pursue a longstanding dream of completing an MBA. She chose Henley after hearing colleagues speak highly of the institution. ‘I also liked the location, because I work in the centre of London.’ But the fact that the programme is pitched at a senior and experienced level (it ranked 8th in the world on this measure in the latest Executive MBA ranking by the Financial Times) and the structure of the course was also appealing to her. ‘I wanted to immerse myself fully in the experience. I didn’t want bits of a programme on a Tuesday night or Saturday morning.’

Spending several days over a weekend at the Greenlands campus, immersing herself in the MBA, meant she could allow herself the time and space to think. She also enjoyed the global learning trips to the USA and South Africa, and the exposure to other cultural environments that this entailed.

‘I came back from both those trips feeling like I'd grown quite substantially in different ways,’ she says. ‘The pressure you are under on these trips to deliver at the end of a few days, and the amount of work that needs to be done, forces you to really pull together as a team. And long after you are back home, you're still having really quite deep conversations, and you're still growing.’

Throughout it all, the awareness she was gaining about herself stood out for her – it influenced how she learned and incorporated the more theoretical aspects of the course and deepened the bonds she was forming with her classmates. ‘The personal insights reshape every contribution you make,’ she explains. ‘If you understand yourself and how you operate, you remodel everything. It’s beautiful, it’s like the common denominator.’

Ultimately, she says that the confidence and inner trust she developed on the MBA has unlocked in her a freedom to be bolder, and that she is seeing the impact of this new freedom in the choices she’s making, starting with when she decided to leave a longstanding role to take a career break.

‘After some much-needed family time, I accepted a role as the CEO of a high-profile healthcare start-up. It was a bold move, but one that I had no doubt I could deliver on. That’s the difference the MBA makes.’

At her graduation, she noted that when she started her studies, she thought having the degree credentials would change everything. And she was right. ‘But that wasn’t everything, in the end, those letters were a nice-to-have. They were a byproduct of everything I had experienced.’

Looking ahead, she hopes to bring this new sense of inner strength not only to her new role, but also to inspire and empower other women and young people starting out in their careers – something she has always been particularly passionate about.

To anyone still wondering whether an MBA is right for them, she has the following words of advice: ‘It’s a phenomenal course that will redefine you, personally and professionally. To truly get the most out of it, and for it to be absolutely transformative, lean into the personal development, which is the vehicle that can really take you places.’