Everyone is an A Player

I first encountered the notion of A, B, and C players in Guy Kawasaki’s The MacIntosh Way in the early 1990s. The book includes a thought exercise: “If A players hire A players and B players hire C players, how do B players get hired?” He attributes the idea to Steve Jobs.?

For the first decade or so of my career, I bought into the A player thing. But then I had an experience that changed my perspective. It involves a test automation engineer who ended up reporting to me. Let’s call him Hank.

I didn’t hire Hank; my manager did. I didn’t even interview him. However my manager moved Hank into my team as part of a reorg. Based on the way my manager described Hank’s history, I assumed he would be quite senior and self-directed.

Sadly, I was disappointed.

After working together for a couple months, I had serious concerns. I felt that Hank had poor judgment about how to use his time, wrote code of questionable quality, lacked testing skills, didn’t seem to understand how to use source control, and strongly resisted letting go of ideas even when they obviously weren’t working. In short, I thought that he wasn’t very good at his job despite having many more years of experience than I did at the time.

I tried giving Hank feedback, but it didn’t seem to land. Maybe it’s me, I thought. Maybe I just wasn’t explaining things clearly. I changed the way I communicated to provide more specific details. I also worked with him more closely and tried to give him every opportunity to show me what he could do.

Nothing seemed to work.?Hank’s automation code didn’t get better, he still didn’t use source control properly (and sometimes not at all), and he pursued his own (dead-end) projects at the expense of the team objectives.

I tried giving him more feedback, but he became defensive. No matter how I explained it, Hank didn’t seem to understand what I didn’t like about his code, or why I directed him to abandon a project he’d been excited about and work on something else. It was tremendously frustrating for both of us.

I was still hopeful. Maybe he had just developed bad habits over the years. He could learn and change, right?

So I leaned in harder, supervising his work with a degree of scrutiny that makes me cringe today. I sent him to training to improve his test automation skills. Week after week we met to go over his deliverables in excruciating detail. Week after week he bumped along, improving, but at a glacial pace. I despaired of ever getting him to a point where I could trust him to work independently.?

After a few months of this, Hank, who had been relentlessly cheerful when we first met, was visibly stressed and miserable. He finally resigned. If he hadn’t, I would have let him go.

So Hank was a C player, right??

Nope.

Several months later, I ran into Hank at a conference. We had an awkward conversation where, in a quavering voice, he told me about his new job. He wanted me to know how well he was doing. His manager valued his skills and ideas. He’d recently been promoted. Better yet, he was leading high visibility projects and the executives above his manager were impressed. He didn’t say it out loud, but the subtext was clear: “I have skill and talent. You just didn’t see it.”

That's when I realized that performance is relative, not absolute. It is a combination of what a team member brings to the table and the context in which they’re operating.

There are no B or C players, only people who can’t thrive in the context they’re in.

This insight has helped me be a much better manager. In my 1:1s with my reports, we don’t just talk about the work, we also talk about culture, teamwork, and values. And if someone isn’t performing well, we talk about their performance, and also about the factors in the environment that might be getting in their way.

In one memorable case, an employee was struggling to stay focused. Let’s call him Gabe.

I gave Gabe the feedback that he seemed to be easily distractible, and needed to focus. We talked about the situation, and he told me that when he seemed distracted it was because he was attending to interpersonal dynamics and gaps in the process at the organization level (rather than the team level).

That wasn't Gabe's job; he was a mid-level programmer on a team. We had other people who were responsible for the organization-wide concerns.

Gabe and I discussed the issue at length over a series of one-on-one meetings. After a few weeks, Gabe had a big AHA moment. “In all my other jobs,” he said, “I was blamed when things fell through the cracks. So I learned that I had to monitor the process and the shifting politics at the organization level out of a sense of self-preservation. I didn't enjoy it, but it became probably 80% of what I think about. I finally understand that I don't need to be hypervigilant here. I get to focus on the fun things, the stuff I only got to spend 20% of my time on elsewhere."

Our context didn’t change, but thanks to our conversations, Gabe’s understanding of it did. From that point on, he focused 100% of his considerable talent on his job, and his performance soared.

In another case, Jude (another pseudonym) had been denied a promotion multiple times. The reason was always the same: Jude had not yet demonstrated the an ability to operate at the next level up. Then the organization went through an agile transformation, brought in new executives, and shifted the culture from lauding heroes to team-based collaboration. The new culture fit Jude’s highly collaborative and communicative style much better, and they rose rapidly in the new organization.

I have seen so many other similar cases. A designer who struggled on a team that did not value user research did extremely well after moving to one that did. A programmer who had been labeled “difficult” became much happier and contributed much more after moving to a team where her colleagues were allies and champions for her. A leader who had struggled to make an impact in a consensus-driven matrix-based organization was able to drive substantial improvements after moving to another group where he had authority to make decisions for his team. A different leader who struggled in a hierarchical organization was able to make huge contributions when moved into a situation where he could lean into his consultative style. A senior-level developer who tended to buckle under pressure did very well at supporting and coaching rather than being on the critical path for delivery.

Not all stories turn out as well as these, of course. Sometimes it’s just not going to work. Hank truly did not have the skills he needed to succeed not just on my team but anywhere in the organization.

What then?

It’s OK to let people go.

It may even be the best possible outcome for all concerned. It’s certainly better than what I did to Hank. I had the best of intentions but I nearly destroyed his spirit. Each time I thought to myself “one more chance” and tried again, I set him up for one more failure. As the failures mounted, and my judginess grew, his self confidence waned. It was soul-crushing. That’s why he looked so stressed: it wasn’t just about the possible loss of a job; it was the loss of his self esteem. He went on to do very well elsewhere.

So if you do let someone go, do it with kindness. Let them preserve their dignity. You do not need to prove that they can’t succeed on your team so thoroughly that they doubt their ability to succeed anywhere. Cut ties long before it gets to that point. When you do so, provide as much support as you possibly can to give them time to find their next thing.

What if you are the one who isn’t thriving?

Remember that you are an A player, but your context isn’t working for you. Maybe you can work with your manager to improve your current context, or move to a new team that would be a better fit for your skills and style.?

Or, depending on the circumstances, maybe the fact that you’re struggling is actually a badge of honor.?

My friend Pradeep Soundararajan tells the story of being fired from his job as a tester working for a test outsourcing company because he didn’t pass 95% of the test cases. Instead, he found bugs. His company valued high test pass rates. Apparently their customers wanted reassurance, not actual information. In short, Pradeep was fired for being too good at his job.

After that formative experience, Pradeep knew there was a better way. He went on to found Moolya, a different kind of test company full of curious and collaborative people who investigate products deeply and provide valuable feedback. Moolya is well-respected, and continues to grow and innovate.

Pradeep is the very epitome of an A player.

So are you.

So is everyone on your team.

The only question is what has to become true for the A player to come out and play?