Action Plan for A-Players
As a leader, it's critical that you take the time to periodically step back and evaluate the folks on your team. Who are your A-players, your B-players, your C-players, or what I call your toxic C-players - those folks that are violating your core values? The specific model I use to do that with my clients on a quarterly basis will be the subject of a different blog post, but today what I want to talk to you about is the highest priority actions that you need to take based on that assessment, and who you take those actions for.
When I ask my clients where we need to take the highest priority actions, who we need to focus on first - your A-players, your B-players, or your C- players - I typically get a split. About half the group believes we ought to focus our C-players first. Let's fix those problems. A little less than half the group believes we ought to focus on trying to coach those B-players to become A-players. Then, a very small percentage says we need to focus on our A-players. Well, I agree with that small percentage.
What I found in my almost 35 years of working with teams, is your A-players have the biggest potential for growth. I know it sounds counterintuitive, but what I found is your C-players are typically C-players because there are some real critical limitations. Your B-players certainly have the ability to become A-players, I hope, and they deserve some coaching to get there. But there's typically some capability ceiling there. Your A-players, typically your superstars, have limitless potential. In addition to having limitless potential, those are the folks who are most likely to leave your organization out of boredom because they're not being challenged, or because they get a better job opportunity somewhere else. The last reason I like to focus on those A-players first is they're typically the formal or informal leaders of your organization. If they are driving towards results, if they are passionate about what they're doing, if they are increasing their performance, that cascades down to the rest of the organization.
So let's talk a little bit about what some of the actions are you might take for your A-players:
Challenge them. The last thing you want to do is just say "great job, keep it up." Challenge them to do more and be more. Take some of the difficult challenges you're dealing with and assign it to them and see what they can do with it.
Increase their responsibility. What else could you give them? I've seen more A-players leave out of boredom than anything else. We are typically as leaders so terrified of overwhelming someone with too much work, but those A-players, those superstars, want that. So find ways to increase their responsibility.
Promote them. Reward them. Recognize them. Recognition can take the place of a big public recognition, or just may be an informal, very personal pat on the back.
Give them more exposure. If that A-player is someone who's not on the leadership team, allow them to come into the leadership team and present something. If it's someone on the leadership team, give them exposure to the board. Find ways to get them more exposure, and that'll make you more comfortable down the road, maybe promoting them up to that next level.
Help them plan their career. Find out where they want to go moving forward. What do they want to do, and figure out a plan to help them get there.
Re-recruit them. Don't wait for an exit interview to find out why an A-player left. At that point it's too late, and you're probably not going to get honest feedback anyway. You are certainly not going to convince them to come back in any reasonable way. So you want to re-recruit them. I heard a term somewhere instead of doing an exit interview, do a stay interview. No, I wouldn't call it a stay interview, but a stay interview means before they leave, when they're still with you and still happy and still motivated, sit down with them and ask them what it's going to take for them to stay forever working for you. What is it that they love doing that you can help them do more of? What is it that frustrates them that you could help them with? Don't wait until they leave to do an exit interview - do a stay interview now.
So my challenge to you is to think of your A-players, and for each of those A-players, each of those superstars, come up with a 90-day plan. What are you going to do? How are you going to challenge them? How are you going to increase their responsibility, promote them, reward them, recognize them, give them more exposure, help them plan their career, or re-recruit them over the next 90 days?