We’re now seven weeks into the season and fantasy football leagues are well underway. If you’re unfamiliar, fantasy football puts you in control of your very own team as both general manager and coach. You create a team made up of players in the Premier League, 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.
Coaching your players
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; to coach and bring out the very best in employees and manage teams to ensure that they continue to produce quality work and execute on the strategy. This involves being tuned into what’s happening day to day. Is your marketing team meeting deadlines? Are they hitting KPIs? How are team members interacting with one another? It is critical for a leader to know what’s going on with their employees at all times in order to ensure success.
Collaborate on and off the pitch
You have likely heard the old adage, “There is no I in team.” This rings true in both fantasy football and in the office. Your biggest asset is your marketing team.
In football, no one position is more important than another; a striker needs the support of the midfielders as much as the goalkeeper needs the backing of the defenders. The same is true of the workplace. 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’s not just what happens on the field that makes for a successful fantasy team. Yes, match 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 be beneficial.
Know when to rethink your strategy
As the legendary Dutch football manager, Johan Cruyff once said, “Every disadvantage has its advantage,” 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 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 a leader, you need to reset and readjust your priorities in order to keep your marketing 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 analyse 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 striker for a great season is a safe bet, but drafting a rising talent 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 points.
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.
By Jim Somers, VP of marketing at join.me
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