Leaders, Don’t Make This Fantasy Football Mistake

Ever heard of a fantasy football league punishment that goes a little too far?

In this video, I share a hilarious (and slightly painful) story about my husband’s league—and the surprising leadership lesson hidden in it.

👉 Leaders, this is one mistake you don’t want to make. Watch now to find out how fantasy football can reveal one of the fastest ways to lose your best people.

P.S. Want to hear more about the legendary “Canvas Keeprs” fantasy football league? Check out the full story here.

• Read the video transcript

  Now, I don't mean to brag, but my husband is the commissioner of his fantasy football league.

  And just last week they gathered at our house to hold their draft. Now this league has taken things a little too far from this wife's perspective.

  You see what happens is the loser of the league has to pose for a photo. The rest of the guys get to choose how they want this photo to turn out, and it turns into this big canvas. So we've had a centaur, we've had a merman, which was my husband. Some different options out there. And then the worst part is they have to hang that canvas along with all the previous years' canvases in their house for a year.

  And so my question is, is this more a punishment for the guy who loses or for his wife and kids? I would say wife and kids.

  My husband was the very first loser, and for a year I had a photo of him as a merman hanging in my living room. Whenever we had a babysitter come over, I had to explain why this was on the wall. Last year, my poor friend, when she hung them up in her house, her daughter cried when she came down and saw them. So, little too far.

  But how does this relate to leadership? Well, I will tell you, just recently I was chatting with a colleague and there were some performance challenges on his team. And rather than the leader directly addressing those challenges, and they were specifically related to, to flexibility with work schedules. So rather than addressing them directly, guess what happened? The leader required that every single team member show up to the office full day, every day. So rather than addressing them, just took the the easy way out of applying strict regulations to everybody, where they had flexibility before. And some people were thriving in that.

  And so leaders, when you have a specific performance issue on your team, you have got to address it address it directly. Do not penalize the rest of the people on the team, just like this fantasy league penalizes the innocent wives. Do not do that to your team. That is the fastest way that you can lose your top performers. Have the guts, have the courage to go address the problem directly.