Empathy is Ruining The Fantasy Football Community

Yes, you read that right. Perhaps, the most important trait needed to be a member of a community, empathy, is ruining the Fantasy Football community. At least on Twitter. This might seem a bit harsh or at least contradictory but will all be made clear. 

Beneficial Feedback

Take this hypothetical example, a content creator posts their latest work. After the minimalistic 🤡 responses, the next most frequent responses are typically lauding praise upon the content creator. Rarely is there honest and actionable feedback that is intended to help the author be better at their craft, or in most cases, hobby.

This hypothetical example is probably all too familiar to anyone that has posted content recently. A worse situation is hearing neither the clown emojis/gifs nor lavish praise but deafening silence. How often do you see real, beneficial feedback that could really help that person improve with their content?

Honesty

In my years of teaching, I struggled to articulate what I thought was a key aspect of working with students. Honesty. If a student was struggling, there was no benefit in shielding them from that truth. In fact, I argued that it was detrimental to the student’s progress because they might develop a false sense of success or work on a topic/skill that wouldn’t move them forward. 

During the past five years as an educational administrator, I’ve been tasked with making not only students better but teachers as well. This adventure has led me to Radical Candor by Kim Scott. Scott lays out a beautifully simple concept that can be applied to working with children and adults alike. That concept is to care personally and challenge directly. 

As a teacher and administrator, it was easy to care personally about my students and staff. I genuinely cared for them not just academically but personally as well. This was displayed by asking how they were every day and actually listening to their responses. Challenging them directly is a much more difficult task. There is a big difference between asking about someone’s weekend and telling them that are doing a poor job and need to be better. Scott does an excellent job of explaining not only how to have these difficult conversations but also the moral obligation that we have to make sure these difficult conversations are happening. 

Challenging Each Other

Looking back to Twitter, there are no managers and employees but Scott’s teachings still ring true. Even though many of our community members have only met one another virtually, there is still a sense of caring that permeates the Fantasy Football Community. One needs only look as far as amazing work by Fantasy Cares to see the amount of benevolence in our community. The concern is the lack of willingness, and sometimes tactfulness, to challenge each other directly.

When we challenge each other directly while still caring personally we are in the realm of “radical candor” according to Scott. However, when we care but chose or refuse to challenge each other we venture into the realm of “ruinous empathy”.

When we refuse to challenge another’s work because we want to be “nice” we are ruining their opportunity to get better. If all we say is “Great Job!”, when will they realize they have commas all over the place. I am terrible with my comma placement but I can’t get better if no one ever points out when I’ve added one or maybe four too many commas to my sentences. Help me be better by challenging me directly. 

Challenging Effectively

It is also worth mentioning that you still need to care personally in order to effectively challenge others directly. When one challenges but doesn’t care, they take a detour into “obnoxious aggression”. These are the clown responses and they come in all different shades of obnoxious and aggressive. Without the feeling of caring, there is no appreciation for the challenge and therefore there will be no improvement. 

Contrary to the old adage, we are not being “nice” when we don’t say anything at all, we are actually hindering someone’s opportunity to grow. If you truly want someone to continue to grow in this wonderful Fantasy Football space, being radically candid is not only the right thing to do but a necessary thing to do.