Touchdown! What Fantasy Football Teaches Us About Leadership

In football, no one position is more important than another. The same is true of your marketing team.

The start of a new season is here—and I am not talking about fall. NFL football kicks off Sept. 8, and, surely by now, football fanatics have organized their fantasy leagues.

If you are unfamiliar, fantasy football puts you in control of your very own team as both general manager and coach. You draft a team from a list of the best players in the NFL, and they compete, head-to-head, on a weekly basis against other players’ teams in your league. Their in-real-life, on-field performance drives your fantasy points and overall success.

But fantasy football isn’t all about Monday morning bragging rights. It can actually provide lessons that are applicable in the workplace, particularly when it comes to working together. Football is a team sport, after all. Here are a few of the similarities between leading on the (fantasy) football field and leading your marketing team.

Hands-On Coaching

When drafting a fantasy team, all players are up for grabs, and as coach, manager, and mentor, it’s your job to ensure the team you put together scores the most points and leads you to victory.

In the workplace, a marketing leader essentially has the same role; he must coach to bring out the very best in his employees and manage to ensure that his team continues to produce top-quality work and executes on a determined strategy. This involves being tuned into what’s happening day to day. Is your marketing team meeting deadlines? Is it hitting KPIs? How are team members interacting with one another? It is critical for a leader to know what’s going on with his employees at all times in order to ensure success.

Collaboration—On And Off The Field

You have likely heard the old adage, “There is no I in team.” This rings true in both fantasy sports and in the office. Your biggest asset is your marketing team.

In football, no one position is more important than another; a quarterback can’t make big plays without receivers or an offensive line to protect him. The same is true of a marketing team. You need the people with creative minds and big ideas just as much as you need the realists that bring everyone back down to Earth and the tacticians that get it all done.

It is not just what happens on the field that makes for a successful fantasy team. Yes, game day is when you earn points, but in the days following, you are setting your starting line for the next week. The same can be said for what happens outside of the office.

Did you know that a recent study actually found that 80% of people feel like they work just as well when they work from home? Sometimes the best working environments are where you’d least expect them to be. A day out of the office to allow for some breathing room can pay dividends.

Know When To Rethink Your Strategy

As the great quarterback Archie Manning once said, “Sometimes you gotta mess up a little bit to wake up,” and the same can be said about life. Occasionally you’re thrown a curveball—or an awful first-round fantasy pick that ends in disaster—and you need to learn to pivot and come up with a new plan.

How many times at work have you experienced a similar situation? As you near the end of the week, for example, you may find that you or your marketing team’s to-do list is not much shorter than it was on Monday. You may think you are being a productive multitasker, but you are actually facing information overload.

In fact, some studies have shown that doing too many things at once may increase the production of the stress hormone cortisol. It is during moments like these when as the marketing team leader, you need to reset and readjust your priorities in order to keep your team productive and finish what’s critical.

Always Strive For Improvement

What do successful fantasy football teams have in common? For one, they try to predict their opponent’s strategies and study players’ past performances and injury histories to determine their own.

During the season, they keep up with football news and take guidance from analysts. All in all: Successful teams are successful because their owners never stop striving for improvement. The same applies to leadership. Strong leaders create strategies based on research (and a dash of intuition). They analyze their industries, know what areas their competitors excel in, assemble an effective team, listen to the advice of colleagues, and never stop learning.

Big Risks = Big Rewards

Drafting a top 10 quarterback on track for a great season is a safe bet, but drafting a “sleeper pick” who has the potential for a big season would be seen as a big risk. Those risks, however, can either transform a fantasy season or cost you a spot in the playoffs.

Leading is no different. Whether implementing new technologies and tools or new team hires, effective leaders carefully assess any opportunity presented to them, but are still willing to take chances.