Are You Thrilled? A Simple and Powerful Way to Identify A Players

What makes an A Player has been well defined. Brad Smart, the author of Topgrading, gave us the original; Scaling Up and the new Scaling Up A Players program continue to uphold it as the standard.

An A Player is someone in the top 10 percent of talent in their industry for the salary you can pay, and someone you would enthusiastically rehire.

This remains the clear and enduring benchmark to reference when gauging an employee’s performance or trying to identify A Players during the hiring process. However, there’s something I’d add to it based on our daily practice of hiring A Player teams and building them to 100%. It’s this simple rule of thumb:

A Player = Someone whose performance you’re thrilled with based on the compensation paid.

That word—thrilled—is what makes this so practical.

When someone is truly in the top 10 percent for their compensation range, and you would enthusiastically rehire them, your experience of that person won’t be mixed or uncertain. You won’t find yourself wondering whether they really own the role. You won’t keep circling back to the same gaps, or need to reference a job description. You’ll feel good about the investment. You’ll trust their initiative, judgment, and ability. You’ll feel confident in the results they produce for your company. At the end of the day, you’re unequivocally glad they’re on the team.

A Player = You’re thrilled.

The opposite thinking is just as useful. B Players aren’t bad people or total failures. In fact, to the outside world, many would look quite defensible. They may be loyal and work hard. They may align with company culture and be well-liked. That’s exactly why so many B Player apologists rush to explain them, protect them, or lower the standard around them.

But their performance feels different on the inside.

B Player = You’re frustrated

When someone consistently lacks initiative, fails to “get it,” or misses results that should be attained, what you feel is not delight. It’s frustration. In fact, it’s the same frustration you feel when you see a child underperforming in school—you know what they’re capable of, but you aren’t seeing it come to fruition. You just aren’t thrilled.

Your job as a leader is to coach B Players into A Players. Great leadership engenders great performances in people.

A Player versus B Player performance is a clear distinction, and it matters. It helps leaders be more honest about performance without being harsh. It also acknowledges the reality that payroll is one of the company’s largest expenses and one of its most important strategic decisions. As Scaling Up Compensation argues, pay should reinforce the right behaviors and strengthen the business, not quietly become a source of drag or disappointment. Topgrading has long emphasized how special true high performers really are, which is why so many organizations end up tolerating less than they intended.

So the original definition still stands. This is simply an easier way to think about it. For the salary you’ve paid, are you thrilled with this person? If you are, you’re probably looking at an A Player.

If instead you’re repeatedly frustrated by a lack of initiative, failure to “get it,” and missed results, you’re probably looking at a B Player, or possibly, even the dreaded C Player.

Leaders deserve top talent. So do their teams and customers. And as my Scaling Up colleague Krista Wade so eloquently puts it, “B Players are the fast track to mediocrity.” That’s exactly why the Scaling Up A Players program exists: to make sure employees and candidates align with the goals of the company. It gives leaders a proven, practical way to raise the bar, apply the standard consistently, and build teams they actually deserve and want to lead.