The Talent Factory: How To Identify and Develop A-Players for Your Team

Read Time: 3 minutes 49 seconds

I got hired because I was an A-Player.

I had been promoted 9 times in 10 years. I had succeeded in multiple lines of business. I had a brand-name MBA and beat out dozens of top-tier candidates for the role.

And within 3 months, one thing was obvious:

I was not an A-player.

I’ve also experienced the opposite first-hand.

I met a young executive at a social event. It was obvious to me immediately she could be an A-player. But as I learned her story, she was clearly struggling. So I did what any rationale leader would do:

I offered her a role.

And as we worked out the transfer to my team with her boss, he quietly warned me that she was "ok but didn't have A-player horsepower."

Three years later, she was running the fastest-growing division of the company.

So what's the lesson in all of this?

We're all A-players in the right context.

But truly understanding which context you have to offer, visualizing the right person who'd thrive in that setup, and then convincing them to do it is a damn-near-impossible trifecta.

So let's see if we can tilt those odds a bit more in your favor.

Are you an “A-player Only” org?

99.99% of companies are not A-players only.

Why not?

Being A-player only is easy to say and impractical to implement.

What's clever for branding is often bad for business.

• A-players are expensive.

• A-players are hard to find.

• A-players are harder to keep.

• A-players take up a lot of space.

So you have a choice:

• Hire A-players in roles where they'll have the most impact and try to develop others into A-players, or

• Pursue all A-players and run the risk of creating an environment that repels A-players

Both strategies can win.

What doesn’t work is pretending to be one thing when you’re really the other.

What's Your Context?

The former CEO of AppSumo, Ayman Al-Abdullah, gave me this timely example yesterday.

Imagine you're running an airline. Which role do you prioritize hiring A-players for?

95% of executives will immediately answer, "Pilots."

But given there hasn't been a domestic airline incident in the US in over 20 years, are the pilots how we choose airlines? No.

It's the customer-facing roles—the people who can make the difference between an outrageously good experience and a ruinous start to your trip.

So as you think about your A-player required roles, ask: