History

The Grubb Institute began its life as the The Christian Teamwork Trust in the late 1950s. Funded voluntarily and involving nationally-known Christian leaders from banking, insurance, business, industry, law and the church it provided a supportive framework within which a staff core worked with a large network of volunteers at issues of faith, life and education in people's working lives.  The Trust tackled over 1000 different requests for help in 8 years which developed into projects including The Lyndhurst Club, The Abbeyfield Society, The Richmond Fellowship, Langley House Trust and Christians in Industrial Life.

The work of the Trust in understanding human behaviour led to involvement in the early development of the group relations movement. Through working with Dr A K Rice and Dr Pierre Turquet of the Centre for Applied Social Research at the Tavistock Institute the Trust explored how the insights of group relations conferences related to basic beliefs of Christian theology. This developed new understanding of psychodynamic and systemic theory within the Group Relations movement itself and to the development of Group Relations conferences like Being, Meaning, Engaging which are still run to this day.

The change of name to the Grubb Institute of Behavioural Studies in 1969 was a recognition of the fact that since 1966 the Trust had been winning consultancy assignments and applied research projects in which it was now seen as a professional body, competing in the secular world of universities, research bodies and management consultancies.

In the 70's and 80's the Institute submerged itself in the critical social issues of the time through, for example, seminal work with the Prison Service, the Transition to Working Life Program for the Unemployed and even work with the Communities in Northern Ireland during the height of the Troubles. It also developed the breadth and vision of its thinking through the setting up of bodies like the Centre for the Study of Social Consciousness and through seminal publications such as Bruce Reed's The Dynamics of Religion.

In the early 1990's the Institute's experience of transforming Institutions and seminal work with ITT led to the development of the conceptual framework of Person, System and Role. This provided a basis for the Institute to branch into professional coaching and consultancy through methodologies like Organisational Role Analysis and the Corporate Work Process. Since then, these conceptual frameworks and methodologies have been continuously tested, redeveloped and adapted in education, health and social care, business, industry, government agencies, the voluntary sector and religious organisations.

Through its persistent search for truth and reality and the experiences of its staff over the years the practice and theory of the Grubb Institute has turned out to be very contemporary. It has been a humanistic approach, in the best sense, which has turned out to have a theological validity - a validity which has come from the positive and often transformative impact the Institute has had, and continues to have, on persons, communities and institutions.