Scott Miller is a Senior Partner and Principal at Action Learning Associates. His organization was responsible for the Sacramento Kings’ day of team building in Colorado Springs.
“We make the day more about them,” said Miller to Cowbell Kingdom in a phone interview. “It’s not about me trying to teach something that they don’t know. It’s just about me introducing these exercises to them and then actually having to get performance results.”
ALA typically works with businesses in the corporate world, spending 90 percent of its time on leadership development. However, the Kings aren’t the first sports team they’ve worked with, according to Miller. In the past, ALA has assisted the United States Women’s Soccer Team, Fresno State’s Men’s Basketball Team and most recently, the Denver Broncos.
Below are a few additional takes from Miller on the Kings’ experience going through ALA’s program.
Were the Kings enthusiastically engaged in the tasks of the day?
These are high performance athletes in (that) they like competition. So, these activities sort of elicit (action). They speak to these guys in other words.
One of the tasks they faced required working together to solve a puzzle. He says they demonstrated high motivation and competitiveness during the problem-solving challenge.
They actually asked “What time did the Broncos get?” and I told them. Then they said, “Wow, alright we’ve got to step it up here so that we can get better performance”. So, they liked to compare themselves and get performance based on what they heard other people do.
What kind of progress did he see the Kings make throughout the day?
They did a great job at pointing some of the things they recognized that they could do better as a team. How they picked themselves up if performance isn’t great or (if) they’re not happy about what they’re doing at the moment. How do they push the pause button long enough to reset and correct course and start getting some better performance results? How do they support one another as opposed to making fun of one another or laughing at each other or just not helping one another out?
How Miller saw them come together as a team.
What was clear was (they) were helping each other up…There were guys that weren’t as comfortable going up the climb at the end of the day as others. And they figured out, “Well, who’s really good at this, who’s not good at it and how do we support them to make them good at it?”
You can see pictures from the Kings’ outdoor excursion here.
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
