Managing a Fantasy Football Team is Just Like Real Life
Calling all football fans, you only have one month left of boring weekends without the sweet sounds of, “da da da da.. da da, da da,” playing on repeat. Only one more month until you’ll hear Scott Hansen kick off a RedZone football Sunday with his classic, “7 hours of commercial-free football starts now.” And most importantly for some, only one more month until your Fantasy Football team proves what they are made of, or really what you are made of.
For NFL fans familiar with Fantasy Football, you know success only comes in turning your football allegiance from team to player. Vikings fans can be found cheering for Aaron Rodgers to throw for 400 yards, while Patriots fans will be screaming for their apps to refresh, hoping to see that Le’Veon Bell ran for four touchdowns. This is Fantasy Football. You’ve picked your team, talked plenty of smack to other owners within your league, and now it’s time to pass the control over to multi-million/billionaire. Sounds promising, right?
Although it's all fun and games, managing a Fantasy Football team can teach you a lot about your approach when managing a team within the work confines.
Put your team in a situation to succeed
When managing a team, it’s essential to be aware of the strengths and weaknesses each person has. Doing so allows you to put them in situations that provide the best opportunity for success, a secondary benefit being that it strengthens your group as a whole. Throughout the Fantasy Football season whenever you see one of your running backs matched up against a team that has an awful run defense, you start them. Their chances of doing well are much higher than someone without that favorable of a matchup. Think of this in the workplace. When you do well, does it not boost your momentum and confidence? Of course it does. The initial action taken by a manager can benefit the individual, as well as the team in the end.
Don’t be afraid to ask others for advice
Sometimes decisions on who you are going to assign to what comes easily to those in managing roles. Other times though, there might be multiple team members that would be a good fit for a specific project you need completed. This is when you have to be humble enough as a manager to ask others in management positions for advisement. Throughout the Fantasy Football season, I read up on what NFL Insiders are reporting. This provides me additional insight and forces me to look at a situation in a way I wasn’t prior. As a manager, information like this is critical to success.
Take action when it’s not working out
This is probably one of the harder things as a manager to truly grasp. We all want the members of our team to succeed and hired them because we thought they could with our guidance. So when it isn’t working out, we need to know when to let go. When you hire (or draft) a team member that isn’t living up to their abilities as an employee (or playmaker), you can only give them so many chances to prove their worth. Once you get halfway through the Fantasy Football season, if your second-round draft pick has yet to provide you with a double-digit point week, it’s time to make a switch.
Encourage Your Team
There are certain qualities any good manager has, and this one can really make or break the path to success. It’s important to point out that encouraging your team doesn’t mean coddling them, it means you provide the support, positive reinforcement, and guidance they need to perform at their best. In the world of Fantasy Football, this can be demonstrated by tweeting encouragement to different members of your team, or cheering like a banshee in the comfort of your family room… like the player inside your phone screen or TV can hear it.
Everyone can probably attest to having a good manager and a bad manager at some point throughout their working life. The experience as a direct report is what allows us to become good managers since we know what it’s like on the receiving end of certain management practices.
No one is ever the perfect manager, but as long as we are focused on doing right by our team members and ourselves, any trophy, even if some call it fantasy, is within reach.