About Us

Grahame Robb Associates Ltd (GRA) was established in 1989. We design and deliver experiential learning and development programmes for businesses around the world.

We tailor our bespoke training programmes to meet the specific requirements of each customer, the challenges they’re facing in their organisation and their business objectives to deliver the best return on investment (ROI) from their training budget.

With over 30 years of experience, we understand how to customise training to maximise learning and create unique and memorable experiences that support individuals and teams to reach their full potential.

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Our bespoke training solutions

Training solutions we offer include:

■ Leadership Development

■ Team Development

■ Personal Development

■ Graduate & Early Careers Development

■ Experiential Business Simulations

■ Culture Change

■ Consultancy

■ Coaching

■ Team Building

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Virtual and online learning

GRA also offers online learning to complement or supplement our face-to-face delivery, including live virtual classrooms led by a facilitator, self-paced eLearning and virtual one-to-one coaching. This approach encourages ongoing engagement with our course material, promotes a longer-term dialogue between colleagues and participants in the workplace after the training is concluded and allows participants to learn at their own pace – accommodating their individual learning styles and work commitments.

To find out more go to our virtual and blended learning pages.

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Download Our Online Learning Brochure

Our training centres

We own and operate two of the UK’s largest Outdoor Centres for delivering high impact, memorable leadership and team development programmes. Our primary focus is on the practical application of skills to enhance learning transfer, which is central to our experiential approach.

Outdoor Learning Centre

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Our Outdoor Learning Centre, at Wokefield Estate, Reading, is a purpose built facility, designed specifically to support high impact, experiential learning and development programmes in the areas of leadership, teams and business strategy.

Outdoor Leadership Centre

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Our Outdoor Leadership Centre, at St. George’s Park, provides you with a unique setting for developing high performing teams and leaders. Our state-of-the-art facility and experienced facilitators will create a fun and challenging experiential training environment suitable for all participants and abilities.

Our core values

GRA’s core values play an essential role in supporting our company's vision and shaping our culture. They define who we are, what we believe in and what we strive for every day. They also guide our team to make the right decisions, strive for continuous improvement, act bravely, work as an effective team and to always do what’s in the best interests of our customers.

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The customer always comes first. Listening carefully, looking through the customers’ lens,
focusing on building trust, making a real difference, and learning our customers’ business as if it were our own.

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Passion for our brand. Having a positive and can-do attitude, seeing things through to the end and never giving up, showing our passion for L&D by helping people to reach their full
potential and maintaining a growth-mindset.

operational-excellence

Excellence in everything we do. Always striving to exceed expectations, taking care of
every little detail, being consistent, having a willingness to learn and being restless in pursuit of improvement.

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Think ‘we’, not ‘me’. Being a part of something bigger than any one of us, having a
collaborative mindset to problem-solving, and always acting with integrity, humility and
respect.

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100% commitment. Rolling up our sleeves and giving everything a go, doing things because
we want to, not because we have to, always following through on what we say we’ll do,
embracing autonomy.

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Make the courageous choice. Being brave when it comes to decision making and going
outside of our comfort zone to push the business forward.

Speak To A Specialist

Speak to one of our specialists to discover how GRA do things differently

By speaking to an expert you can: 

  • Find out how we can tailor programmes to meet your  specific requirements

  • Learn more about our collaborative virtual training

  • Find out more about our state of the art outdoor centres

  • Understand our training approach

  • And much more!

Our 6 learning principles
The GRA approach to professional training and personal development

As well as our core values, we also abide by our six key learning principles. In our experience, this training approach produces better leaders, happier, confident, and more effective teams and more sustainable behaviour change.

We aim for every delegate to return to their workplace clear on how to apply what they’ve learned to their day-to-day roles and team interactions, and to have completed training that was participative, practical, engaging and fun. 

1. Make a positive and lasting difference

2. Apply a flexible and tailored approach

3. Make learning experiential

4. Touch people’s emotions

5. Create memories

6. Make it fun!

Grahame Robb Associates have been market leaders in customer-focused experiential training since 1989, with two fully equipped Outdoor Centres and a wide range of options available for one-off and modular courses. To discuss your requirements with one of our experienced teams, or to find out more about our offerings, please call us today on 01962 779911, or click here to get in touch.

Our logo - why dolphins?

Our logo has incorporated dolphins since our inception and it's often a topic of curiosity and debate among our delegates, we like to turn it around and ask them why they think we may have chosen this evocative symbol.

Most people correctly identify that dolphins symbolise collaboration, protection and a fine balance of curiosity, playfulness and intellect - principles we draw inspiration from in all our training activities!

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This is why we do what we do

"I thought it was outstanding! The staff have been amazing, really knowledgeable and used activities to highlight the evidence behind the
models."

- Anna Kilmartin, SJP Graduate

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This is why we do what we do

“In comparison to the workshops we have done in the past, I found this one to be the most rewarding and certainly the best organised and most fun! I know from speaking to others that this sentiment is shared among the group. Thank you GRA!”

- Laurence Chetwynd, Customer TrainingExecutive

kyocera

This is why we do what we do

“I had only heard positive remarks about GRA prior to attending this course, so I was not surprised by the quailty of the training that was delivered.”

- Amy Johnson, SJP Apprentice

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This is why we do what we do

"Making learners feel comfortable and secure when joining a session is just as important online as it is face-to-face. The team at GRA achieved this by taking the time to familiarise learners with their platform and provide individual technical support as needed without disrupting the flow of the session."

- Sam, The FA Group

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This is why we do what we do

"Our programme with Grahame Robb Associates, using the experiential business simulation, challenged our leaders and significantly increased levels of trust in a way that enabled great peer-to-peer and coaching conversations. We believe this has been a pivotal building block to support them in achieving their full potential as leaders; enhancing self-awareness and strengthening our leadership community in Tech Data.”

-Michelle Ford, Talent and Development Manager

This is why we do what we do

“To deliver a virtual week of induction was definitely unknown territory for us, however, working with GRA, this was easily achieved! The variety of sessions such as self & team awareness and personal branding, were thoroughly engaging and were a perfect complement to our internal sessions.”

– Gill Ireson, Early Careers Development Manager

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This is why we do what we do

“On behalf of all of us at HSO we would like to thank GRA for the great support you provided in helping to make our ‘One Team training conference’ a great success. Your professionalism, willingness to ‘make it work’ all helped to make our event at St. George’s Park such a success. Nothing was too much trouble, and your support was brilliant! We have received so much positive feedback about the entire event, a fantastic time was had by all attendees. We look forward to working with you again in the future.”

– Jacky Duggan, HR Team Administrator

This is why we do what we do

“I would like to thank the GRA team for all their help organising our event again this year. The group was double the amount we had last year and we have had fantastic feedback from all staff from the UK, US and India offices. Please pass on our thanks to all the instructors and organisers. It was amazing how they remembered us from last year and it was great to have the same instructors as last year too. I already have staff asking about next year.”

–Laura, Finance Manager, Healthcare organisation

This is why we do what we do

“We needed to give our staff the opportunity to get to know each other better. In asking GRA to undertake the task, I knew we’d get creativity and purpose, but the laughter, courage, spontaneity and sheer sense of having fun together exceeded my hopes and made for a hugely successful programme. I have nothing but positive feedback – a real testament to GRA.”

– Tom Hall, Director, Alitex

This is why we do what we do

“GRA were brilliant and I would thoroughly recommend them for anyone who is looking to do a corporate team building event. The staff were so helpful and patient with my colleagues and everyone got so much out of the day.”

- Anna Frazer, HR Advisor, Prescient

This is why we do what we do

“I would like to thank the GRA team for a very enjoyable and productive experience. It is not often that we engage with a company that is so in tune with what we are trying to achieve, it was such a great understanding of the goals and objectives!”

- Gary Marsh, VP for EMEA Sales, Microchip

This is why we do what we do

“GRA’s facilitators have a lovely balance of professionalism and approachability to what they do. We worked together from the start to design and deliver a series of really experiential workshops as part of our graduate programme. Our own facilitators and the participants had nothing but praise for the knowledge, flexibility and responsiveness that the team from GRA brought to our events and the feedback has been fantastic with many saying it’s the best training they’ve been on.”

- Sarah Rudder, Learning & Development Consultant, Thales

This is why we do what we do

“GRA’s Outdoor Leadership Centre was a great addition to the things we worked on in training, so it’s certainly something I would do with the team again.”

- Steve McNamara, During his time as England Men’s Rugby League Manager

This is why we do what we do

“The best virtual training session I have attended. I was very impressed! GRA were good at making everyone feel at ease, lowering the barriers to engaging in discussions and creating a very positive and knowledgeable atmosphere.”

– Miki Van Kooji, Msc Student International Management, Kings College London

This is why we do what we do

“The vision programme our senior team attended was extremely effective and efficient, and i have received so much positive feedback about how much everyone enjoyed working with Grahame and his team! We will definitely be staying in touch on future collaboration!”

– Samantha Barrass, CEO, Business Banking Resolution Service

This is why we do what we do

“The vision programme our senior team attended was extremely effective and efficient, and i have received so much positive feedback about how much everyone enjoyed working with Grahame and his team! We will definitely be staying in touch on future collaboration!”

– Samantha Barrass, CEO, Business Banking Resolution Service

This is why we do what we do

“Thank you for a very enjoyable 2 days! Due to the pandemic, this was not our plan A, but I thought it was a terrific plan B. I very much enjoyed meeting all our staff and despite the remote working conditions I sensed an espirit de corps that I really wasn’t expecting.”

- Caroline Barr, Non-Executive Director, Business Banking Resolution Service

This is why we do what we do

“I enjoyed the residential programme we did with GRA at St. George’s Park very much – it was great to learn about our inherent personality traits and their translation to best-suited roles in a team. I think I speak on behalf of all of us when I say that the two days spend with GRA were fun-filled yet fruitful, relaxing yet productive. I would like to extend my thanks to you for organising this and especially to Joe, who led a fantastic session. I look forward to further training with GRA and coming back to St. George’s Park in the future!”

- Mrinalini Chakrabarty, Engineering Graduate, Collins Aerospace

This is why we do what we do

“I was a total cynic when it came to 'outward-bound' training as I had seen so much that was fun, but not really relevant to learning anything new about yourself. I am very passionate about learning events that have a purpose and being able to demonstrate measurable change in the people who have attended them. Since attending a Leading Change event with GRA, where I saw a level of skill provided by the facilitators to really draw out the learning from the outdoor events that I had not witnessed at anywhere else, I have been waiting for an opportunity to use them. It presented itself this year and we have just completed out first trainee scheme induction event and plan to run one every year for the foreseeable future as they did such a good job!”

- Lindsey Arnold, Learning & Development Manager, Telford Homes Plc

This is why we do what we do

“When we met GRA, we were intrigued by the energy, enthusiasm and knowledge that the team possessed. We knew instantly that they were the perfect match for Kyocera when they introduced their ‘Challenge by Choice’ policy, providing a safe learning environment for our employees.”

- Julia Allen, Learning & Development Manager, Kyocera

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