5 Management Lessons I’ve learned from Fantasy Football

Posted on February 19, 2014 by Jay Rooke, One of Thousands of Entrepreneurship Coaches on Noomii.

Confession: I’m not the biggest football fan, however, football dominates the American social scene from September to January. So, as the saying goes, “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” and in 2013, I broke down and joined a Fantasy Football League. Turns out I had a blast. Here’s what I learned.

1. Play in the peripheries of your comfort zones

Strictly adhering to your principles may be limiting your happiness. When I held a “principled” perspective on football—“I don’t do football”—I was tricking myself. I don’t have any principles against football. But I took a stance against it as if I did, when what I was really saying “no” to was the opportunity to move outside my comfort zone and grow in the process. In essence, I socially isolated myself every football season and became resentful because I didn’t want to bend. So I suffered. Via my own choices.

There are obviously some principles we hold that shouldn’t bend, e.g., racism, equality, integrity, etc., but the red herring is when you start to hold “I don’t play video games” with the same “principled” intensity as “I don’t perpetrate prejudice.” Take a minute to examine some of your “principles” and unpack them. Get curious about what is really lurking beneath the surface. If none immediately come to mind, I’ll prime the pump: how do you feel about foreign products? Chain restaurants? Organic (or not) food? Taking help? Asking for help? Accepting compliments?

In the business world we frequently get lulled into analyzing the landscape and then operating within those paradigms. When this occurs, attention frequently gets shifted away from big initiatives and onto the little details—creativity disappears and employee engagement dissipates—in essence, the corporate culture becomes stagnant. The next time you find yourself limited by your principles or “the way it is,” pay attention to whether more options may be available to you if you can start to operate in the periphery of your comfort zone.

By going outside of my comfort zone and playing Fantasy Football, I beat the system. I didn’t change the macro landscape surrounding football, but by overruling my inner-critic I stole a lot of fun out of a situation that I was previously avoiding engaging with.

What’s one area where additional opportunities are available to you if you play in the periphery of your comfort zone?

2. Stop listening to other people. At some point the pundits are wrong, and you own all of your own consequences.

For those that are unfamiliar, Fantasy Football participants must choose their starting lineup each week; as you can imagine, the internet is overflowing with expert and amateur commentary on which players are the best picks. For the Fantasy participant, this wealth of opinions presents a challenge comparable to that which many of my business clients struggle: how to strike the balance between taking in enough external information and/or advice to do your due diligence, while simultaneously owning the expertise and value that you personally bring to bear on a situation.

When you find yourself in the mode of analysis-paralysis or conversely, making “decisions” that feel more like guessing, take a moment to turn inward. Shift the focus of the exercise from finding “the answer” to honing in on self-trust. “The answer” is rarely out there; if it was, I trust you would have found it quickly. Most of the time, “the answer” lies within us and it’s the sweet spot where the two perspectives overlap. If you start paying attention to when you feel a sense of self-trust, it’s analogous to how a camera viewfinder flashes when it’s in focus—when you feel it, you know it’s time to point the trigger.

When I made the playoffs in my league, I unknowingly drifted into self-doubting mode and went around asking everyone’s advice for who I should play. I benched one of my players that subsequently scored 27 points that day—I ended up losing by two points. Granted, I could have lost based on my own decisions just as much as anyone else’s, but my energy surrounding the loss would have a completely different charge if I lost the game based on my decisions—not others’ advice.

So why do we surrender our self-trust to endless research and opinion polls? Because we want to avoid being wrong or making a mistake. Newsflash: You. Will. Make. Mistakes. We will make them in one form or another for the rest of our lives. When you shift to a perspective of self-trust decision-making, you will still be wrong sometimes. In fact, perhaps a bunch. But that is also the position from which you will make your best moves, so if you want those high highs, then you need to commit to trusting yourself when you make mistakes.

When you reflect on the decisions that you’re most remorseful about, my guess is that those were the decisions where you listened to somebody else when you wish you had trusted your gut. I am a big believer in betting on the dice you throw. At the end of the day, whether you listen to others or yourself, you own all of the consequences. And remember: when you make a mistake, at least it was your mistake.

My suspicion is that there’s a move you’ve been wanting to make for a while, and that you have researched and analyzed the situation nine ways from Sunday. What would be available to you if you trusted yourself to make the decision and own the consequences? The universe might be waiting for you to decide…

3. When it Comes to Happiness, Participation Trumps Performance

Many of my clients are high performers that typically possess high levels of external happiness markers (e.g., they hold an enviable job, have a nice car, own a home, etc.), but they struggle to achieve a commensurate level of internal happiness. These individuals are typically frustrated because they excel in making things happen in the workplace, but making “it” happen in their personal lives proves to be perennially elusive.

Paradoxically, there is a wealth of happiness to be accessed when we learn that the traits that allowed us to succeed in an academic setting might actually represent roadblocks to achieving happiness in our professional or personal lives.

Have you ever proudly born the mantra: “do it right or don’t do it at all”? Be honest with yourself: examine the net happiness you gained from doing all your projects “right” compared to the happiness forgone by choosing “not to do it at all.” What if I suggested that you pick a few areas of your life where you adopt following Voltaire quotation—“Perfection is the enemy of good”?

Right now, I guarantee you there is an activity that your playful soul is just begging you to undertake. So why aren’t you? Perhaps some part of you says that in order to do that activity “right,” you need to devote more time to it than you have to spare. Let’s pretend that’s true, that you really don’t have the time to take on that activity at the level of performance that you are used to operating at. Let me remind you of something: when you were motivated to play in the sandbox as a child, you were motivated to play in the sandbox. Period. It wasn’t because you are motivated to play in the sandbox perfectly.

When I see a high-performing client that is consistently denying himself opportunities to be happy, we usually find tremendous value in taking a step back and exploring the motivating reasons for pursuing an activity, and then making some supportive guidelines around it. There’s a big difference between the amount of time and energy it takes to be excellent and the amount you need to participate. When you only participate in pursuits that you strive to be excellent at, you miss out of a lot of opportunities for creative growth and happiness. What if you broke down “recreation” to “recreate [the rules of engagement]”?

In the context of Fantasy Football, I had refrained from playing in past years because people claimed it “took too much time.” In my first season, I spent about 15-30 minutes per week and I had an absolute blast with it. I backed up and realized that my motivating reason to pursue fantasy football was to have more fun and be more connected to my friends during the football season. Knowing that, I agreed with myself that I would participate in the league within a timeframe that honored my larger commitments, and that I would let the outcomes fall where they may. I recreated my rules of how I pursue recreation differently from work projects and I reaped the benefits.

Right now, there might be something you like the thought of doing, but you refrain because you’re worried it will consume too much time, or that God forbid, you will only be “average” at it. Instead, try adopting a perspective of “I’m going to do this recreationally.” (I don’t know a lot of good bowlers, but I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have fun bowling.)

The bottom line is to get moving and start doing that something. Getting in motion is what breaks the inertia—it’s what keeps us growing and feeling fulfilled. So go do that something you want to do, and do it recreationally—you’ll be the better for it.

4. Talk some trash

Ok, maybe that’s not the most sage advice, but declaring your intentions is. When I announced in my Fantasy League that I’m going to crush my opponent, I certainly found that I paid a little more attention to my picks, made decisions more sharply and cared a little more about whether or not I accomplished my goal. Publicly declaring our intentions gets us in motion and increases our probability of success by forcing us to prioritize our wants and specify our goals.

As you read this, I guarantee there’s something you want to do for you, and that you’ve been thinking about it for a while. How much do you want it? What will you define your success? Will you announce it right now? If not, why not? When you declare your intentions, the universe will rise to meet you, and you might be surprised how many people may be inspired to join you or provide guidance.

Whether you are the leader of your entire organization, a business unit, or simply your family, how often do you announce your goals and declare your intentions? What would be different if that practice changed? That’s my challenge to you: whether it’s a friend, a spouse, your department, or Facebook, put yourself out there, talk some trash to the part of you that’s playing small and announce your intentions—your potential self will thank you for it.

5. Don’t get emotionally attached

One blind spot that high performers frequently fall victim to is trying to be too smart for their own good. High performers, almost by definition, are high performers because they made smarter decisions than their counterparts, however, the pitfall I see some of my clients encountering presents itself when they shift the focus from loving the results to loving how smart they are.

I personally love making decisions based on the overlay of data analytics and emotional intelligence. In the context of fantasy football, for example, this may result in choosing a particular running back because 1.) he has been statistically performing well in prior weeks, AND 2.) because I heard a distinct tone of confidence and eye contact from that running back during a pregame interview. However, there were certainly points in the season where I cut a player I should have held onto because I “didn’t like him,” or when I held onto a player I should have cut because I was in love with seeing my strategy play out. When we get emotionally attached to our decisions, we sacrifice our objectivity and muddy the waters. This is why many seasoned gamblers refrain from betting on games involving their home team.

Have you ever retained or championed an underperforming employee because you recruited him? What about insisting on seeing your product launch through, or pursuing your market strategy despite the fact that external indicators were no longer supporting the success of the initiative? By definition, we make decisions based on their future potential. However, if there is a consistent gap between actual performance and your predicted potential performance, it’s a fair indicator that you may want to evaluate if you’re becoming emotionally attached to your decisions.

When you become emotionally attached, you abandon your innate abilities. If you fall victim to this, the kryptonite is to recommit to placing your analytical focus on loving the results of your decisions, not the process leading up to them. It’s the difference between making your emotions work for you or against you.