Do your A-Players know how much you value them? In this episode, Shannon Waller explains why top talent is often the easiest to overlook and the high cost of taking them for granted. She also shares a practical five-part formula to ensure your best people feel utilized, appreciated, and rewarded so they never want to leave.

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Show Notes:

• Your A-Players are the top 10 percent of available talent for a role, consistently performing at a high level while fully living your company’s core values.
• A-Players make your life easier by consistently delivering easier, faster, better, and cheaper results, which is exactly why they’re so easy to unintentionally take for granted.
• When you overlook your best people, they often take on more and more responsibility, leading to burnout, resentment, and eventually disengagement or departure.
• Top talent will leave if they don’t feel seen, appreciated, rewarded, or fairly compensated for the extraordinary value they’re creating.
• The real financial cost in most companies isn’t A-Players’ compensation, but the time and energy spent managing misaligned team members who don’t live your values.
• Retaining A-Players starts with treating them as an opportunity, not a given, and being intentional about how you invest in their growth, rewards, and future with your company.
• Appreciation is a performance strategy, so make a habit of specifically acknowledging the results and effort your A-Players make in language that really lands for them.
• Reward your A-Players with meaningful financial recognition tied to their results, remembering that their excellence is already saving you money and complexity elsewhere in the business.
• Maximize your A-Players by giving them real opportunities to grow, learn, and expand their capabilities so they can see a bigger future for themselves inside your organization.
• Refer your A-Players internally by championing their reputation, talking them up to others, and making sure the rest of the organization knows how great they are and what they contribute.
• It’s also important to protect your A-Players from being dragged down by B- and C-Players because top talent wants to work with other top talent and will leave if you tolerate drama and low standards.
• Treat retaining A-Players as a core entrepreneurial strategy because when you take great care of them, they take great care of your company, your clients, and your freedom.

Resources:

Topgrading by Brad Smart and Geoff Smart

Multiplication By Subtraction by Shannon Waller

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