Transforming leaders and managers in Birmingham

At Grahame Robb Associates (GRA), we offer a range of bespoke training and development solutions in Birmingham for leaders and managers of all levels, from senior executives and middle management, to team leaders and first-time managers.

Our bespoke training programmes in Birmingham are tailored to meet your specific organisational needs and the challenges your leaders and managers face in their day-to-day working lives. Each course is developed in line with your organisational culture, training objectives, business goals, and budget, with a range of practical and focused outcomes.

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Download Our Leadership Development Brochure

Our core Birmingham training programmes

As well as offering completely bespoke leadership and management development programmes in Birmingham, we also have a range of core programmes that can be customised to meet your needs or combined to create a modular training programme – these include:

Leading For Results Logo V1

Leading for Results provides an accessible behaviour change model that’s easily applied in the real world and focuses on what truly matters to deliver consistent performance.

Through plenary discussions, practical exercises, and facilitator observations, individuals will utilise GRA’s BASK model to challenge preconceptions and focus on the attitudes, skills and knowledge required to enact key behaviours for improved performance linked to a common purpose and your organisational objectives.

Building A Shared Vision Logo V1

Building a Shared Vision focuses on building a compelling, collective vision for the future of your organisation which is critical to energising, inspiring and engaging your employees to work towards a common goal and create a platform for long-term success.

By utilising a proven framework and gaining guidance from our experienced facilitators, leaders will contribute to the assessment of the current situation, develop a new vision, and commit to an action plan that operationalises the strategic objectives of the organisation.

Relationship Strategies Logo V1

Relationship Strategies focuses on relationship building and influencing strategies by enhancing people’s ability to effectively relate to others.

Through diagnosing an individual's personal styles and how this differs from their peers, and understanding the Dr. Tony Alessandra’s Platinum Rule, individuals develop their ability to understand what drives other people and recognise options for communicating with them more effectively.

Self & Team Awareness Logo V1

Self & Team Awareness ensures that leaders and teams are able and encouraged to ‘look in the mirror’ by better understanding their motivations, behaviours, and relationships, helping them to identify how they differ from others and therefore how they can consistently work more effectively with and/or manage them.

Through personality profiling and team theory, individuals understand the impact of their contribution to a team and how to identify complementary styles.

Decision Making V1

Decision Making gives individuals, managers, and leaders the skills needed to make sound, confident decisions by focussing on developing a decision-making process appropriate to different situations, creating a culture to enable effective decision making and understanding how to give helpful feedback.

Through team challenges and reviews, your people will identify task and process related decisions, as well as the crucial moments that influenced the quality of their decisions, the impact of behaviour on decisions, and the effects of competition.

 

Resilience for Results Logo V1

Resilience for Results embraces cutting edge diagnostics technology, proven tactics, and techniques as well as practical exercises to provide individuals with the tools they need to enhance their mental, physical and emotional resilience in the workplace.

These adaptabilities enable people to thrive under pressure and to offer a beacon of guidance, support and strength to others in their team or organisation.

Business Simulations Logo V1

Our Business Simulations help leaders and teams to replicate the real-life business challenges they face in their organisation every day, including end goals for a customer and strategic objectives. These complex scenarios take place in a physically and emotionally safe environment and provide the perfect platform for teams to put theory into practice, test new skills, learn from mistakes, reflect on performance and achievements, and apply that knowledge back in the workplace.

 

ACL-3

Action Centred Leadership provides a great framework for leaders looking to enable their teams to work more effectively as a unit. By taking command of the three areas of John Adair’s model, team leaders will learn how to use each of the elements according to the situation. In turn, leaders will understand how to strike the right balance managing their team, getting better results, building morale, and improving quality and productivity – the mark of any great manager.

 

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Coaching Essentials

Coaching Essentials helps managers and leaders to understand the importance of coaching for the development, growth, and performance of their people.

By teaching individuals how to effectively coach their employees - not just to manage them but to increase productivity, your leaders can create an environment of trust and autonomy and deliver better bottom-line results.

SLII®

SLII® empowers managers to become adaptive leaders. Backed by Ken Blanchard’s 40 years of research and an unmatched track record of results, it teaches your leaders how to lead situationally by giving their people the right support or direction at the right time.

SLII® enables leaders to build deeper relationships and more meaningful connections with co-workers that create exponential impact, leading to more productive and engaged employees and an organisation that excels.

Self Leadership

Self Leadership teaches individuals the mindset and skills they need to become empowered, proactive self-leaders who take control of their own success and are committed to getting results for their organisation.

Self Leadership builds on the leadership model SLII® and integrates the latest research on the proactive skills required for individuals to be most effective. Team members learn a shared language for discussing their own development and performance, allowing them to have more effective conversations and build more trusting, open relationships with their managers.

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 near Birmingham 

  • Understand our training approach

  • And much more!

Our training approach

With over 30 years’ experience in the leadership and management development field, we specialise in engaging and memorable experiential programmes, using a blend of face-to-face training, online learning, outdoor activities, and team challenges.

Our goal is to provide practical skills-based training that benefits leaders in types of challenges they face every day, and that help them to reach places in their careers they didn’t think were possible. In our opinion, the best way of achieving this is to create training experiences that people feel connected to and that take them outside of their normal environment. In the process of engaging with our programmes, participants are invited to step outside their comfort zone, placing renewed faith in their own capabilities and the support of their colleagues.

Our training centres near Birmingham

GRA own and operate two purpose-built outdoor training facilities in which our face-to-face training and team activities take centre stage, one within the De Vere Wokefield Estate outside Reading, and the other at St. George’s Park, near Burton upon Trent, where we are proud to be the Football Association’s Official Outdoor Leadership Partner. Our centres are designed to support high impact, experiential learning and development programmes and are the perfect location for your next leadership or management programme.

Skilled managers make for high-performing teams. Through our customised training courses, we help your people unlock their full potential to grow in their roles, developing their communication and relationship skills, their confidence, self-awareness, and their ability to perform and thrive under pressure.

Wokefield Estate

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St. George’s Park

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Get in touch

To find out more about our one-off training events and modular programmes in Birmingham, and how we blend traditional face-to-face programmes with our innovative online learning, please call 01962 779911 today, or click here to send us a message.

What do you mean by experiential?

Experiential in its simplest form means learning through doing or learning through experience, a key part being people’s reflection on those experiences. At GRA, we include practical exercises, simulations, and team challenges into our programmes to create more memorable training experiences and to help participants integrate their knowledge more successfully back in the workplace.

To find out more about our experiential approach, go to our why choose us page.

How do you tailor your training to meet different organisational needs?

At GRA, our aim is to get to know your business like it’s our own so that we can see things through your lens. We do this by taking the time upfront to listen to your development needs and to get a full and rounded picture of your values, culture, goals, and key measures of success.

Once we’re confident we know what you’re looking for, we’ll go away and put together a proposal that details a unique training solution for you, whether that be through tailoring existing GRA products or by creating a completely new and bespoke programme that’s more specifically for your organisation or team. We not only tailor our training through content design but also in our delivery method, so whether you’re looking for a face-to-face, virtual or blended approach, we can adapt to suit your requirements.

We also recommend conducting ‘day in the life’ interviews with a selection of people from your organisation to establish hopes and concerns about upcoming training and to allow us to take a deeper dive into people’s day-to-day roles, responsibilities, and individual needs.

How do you evaluate your training?

Like our training, we tailor our evaluation strategy to the requirements of each of our customers and like to work in partnership with you to ensure we select the best metrics to evaluate the performance of our delivery team, delegate experience, learning transfer and overall service, to ensure we provide maximum ROI for your organisation. We also want to ensure that the metrics being assessed are consistent with your values and objectives.

In addition to quantitative metrics, we also believe in providing delegates with the opportunity to explore their observations and reflections in more detail and therefore recommend incorporating qualitative feedback in the review process.

Should you have one, we can also work with your existing evaluation systems following the training to manage the performance of our delivery team.

Do you have any case studies we can look at?

Yes, we have a number of case studies that you can view via our customer stories page and even more are coming soon!

Do you have any clients that you’ve worked with that we can talk to?

Yes, we would be happy to put you in touch with some of our trusted clients of past and present, just give us a call on 01962 571005 to discuss this further.

Do you have experience working with companies in our sector or industry?

GRA has worked with organisations in a number of industries over the last 30 years, from manufacturing and pharmaceuticals to public health, technology, banking and insurance, local authority and more.

But even if we haven’t worked in your industry before, we take the time to listen to and learn from our clients and to tailor our training programmes to your specific needs. We may be the experts when it comes to training, but we fully recognise that you are the experts when it comes to knowing and understanding your business.

Do you offer virtual/online training?

Yes, we offer a great range of virtual training options and online learning tools. To find out more go to our virtual learning page.

Do you offer a blended/hybrid training approach?

Yes, we pride ourselves on our ability to offer our clients a completely blended training experience. To find out more go to our blended learning page.

What training models do you use?

We use a range of trusted learning and development models that we really believe in and that have stood the test of time. During our 30 years of designing and delivering training, we have also developed some of our own unique models which sit within our branded training programmes.

Well known models we use are, but are not limited to, the following:

  • 70-20-10 for L&D

  • Tuckman’s Stages of Group Development

  • Herzberg’s Two Factor Theory

  • Kolb’s Cycle of Experiential Learning

  • Belbin Team Role Theory

  • SLII Model

  • MBTI Four-Factor

  • Honey & Mumford Learning Styles

  • Thomas Kilmann Conflict

  • Covey’s Circles of Influence

  • HeartMath Coherence

  • HeartMath Domains of Resilience

  • Platinum Rule

  • Johari Windows

  • McGregor’s X & Y Theory

  • Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

  • Baddeley & James’s Political Intelligence

  • SMART Goals

  • SWOT & Pestle

Do you use psychometrics as part of your training?

Yes, some of our training programmes do include the use of psychometrics or behavioural assessments and 360-degree tools, such as Belbin, MBTI, GPI, and insights.

We know that there can be a stigma around psychometrics, and therefore always want to assure our clients and delegates that those we include as part of our training are ones in which we have had many years of experience and wholeheartedly trust in their theory.

We would also never assume the narrative that these tools exclusively define anyone’s personality or behaviour and are only ever used as additional training aids. At no point is anyone made to complete something they don’t understand or made to share the results of an assessment with someone they don’t wish to.

How much does your training cost?

The cost of our training very much depends on what type of programme you’re interested in, how much you want us to tailor it to your specific needs, how many people it’s for and the time constraints. However, we will always aim to put together a training package that suits both your needs and your budget and we will be as flexible and transparent as possible when it comes to outlining and discussing costs with you.

If you want to enquire about costs for a training programme, please get in touch with us by calling 01962 571005 or email us via enquiries@gra.uk.com

 

At what locations do you offer training?

We can provide training at any number of locations, whether that’s at your offices, at one of our training centres, at one of our partner hotels, or at any other venue of your choice.

GRA also deliver training globally and has worked in over 28 countries in just the last 7 years.

Can you connect us to hotels/venues where we can host our training as part of your offering?

Yes, we are partnered with and work alongside a number of fantastic hotels and venues that we would happily connect you with. We can also facilitate this on your behalf as part of our service if you prefer.

If you would like to talk to our team about this, please give us a call on 01962 571005.

How many people can you accommodate on your training programmes?

This completely depends on the method in which we’re delivering your training and what type of training we’re delivering for you.

Typically, our face-to-face training programmes can hold numbers anywhere from 5 to 30 delegates in a single classroom. Any number above 20 will usually require multiple facilitators, as will programmes that include outdoor activities. Groups over 30 will typically be delivered to in cohorts, but this is dependent on the type of face-to-face training we’re delivering for you.

Our online/virtual training classes are slightly smaller and tend to accommodate anywhere from 5 to 15 delegates in a single classroom. Numbers above 15 would typically require us to deliver in cohorts, but again, this is subject to the type of online training we’re delivering for you. Most of our virtual training sessions include both a facilitator and a moderator as a minimum, more facilitators are likely to be required for higher numbers.

For Team Building events, we can accommodate anywhere from 5 to 200 delegates at any one time, location and schedule permitting. See our Team Building FAQs for more information.

Is all your training delivered in-house?

All our training is either delivered by our experienced in-house training team or by one of our equally experienced and trusted associate training teams. We will never take on any training that we don’t have the capacity to facilitate within these teams. If we can’t accommodate what you’re looking for, we will always be upfront and honest about it and will point you in the direction of other providers that may be able to help you if we can.

What happens if we need to reschedule or cancel our training with you?

Our cancellation policy is clearly outlined in our T&Cs when forming an agreement with you, so please check this to see how you would be affected if you were to cancel. Rest assured that we will be as flexible as possible when it comes to rearranging and rescheduling dates for training and we have a fantastic administration team who would be happy to talk to you.

If you need to talk to us about cancelling or rescheduling your training, please give us a call on 01962 571005.

What is currently in place to protect those who attend training at your Centres from Covid-19?

Our Covid-19 protocols are constantly changing and evolving in line with government guidelines. Click here to see our most up to date protocols. If you have training already booked with us, our administration team will clearly outline anything you need to know about safeguarding against Covid-19 prior to your arrival at either of our Outdoor Centres.

If you have any additional questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact us on 01962 571005 or email us via enquiries@gra.uk.com

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

kyocera (2)

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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