I do have a bee in my bonnet about team building activities, I must say. In fact, I’d go further and say it’s more like a whole hive. And it’s because so many managers arrange them without first determining the specific goals they want to achieve; without determining criteria to measure whether the goals were achieved; and without determining how they will monitor their progress against the goals. And often there is little work done with team members to ensure there is a skills transfer after team or group activities to ensure any new learnings can be integrated into individuals’ daily practises. Often too, managers and staff fail to celebrate the successes they have when key achievements have been made. An organisation’s return on investment on their training dollar can be significantly increased if they follow training up with individual or group coaching. A 1997 study (Olivero, Bane & Kopelmann, Public Personnel Management, Washington) found follow-up coaching combined with a supervisor training programme increased productivity by an astounding 88%. The same study concluded that training along increased productivity by 22.4%. The bottom-line: coaching increased productivity more than 300%. All in all, it does make me wonder why more organisations don’t look at their training dollar, training activities and coaching with a bit more care.