It's hard to trust that this is from a real "A-player" when it throws so many of my "not an A-Player but a genial bullshitter" flags.

- Poorly written and communicated, with faux-profound single word paragraphs

- 'Insights' that would look more at home on a wall decal ("It’s true that I resisted the negativity, escaped, and embraced the positivity and rode it to its potential.")

- "I used to think this way, before I became enlightened" style statements showing complete lack of self-awareness

- Article about a vague concept without defining any of the behaviours that go along with that concept

- Reference to 2x2 matrices (iron law of management theory: all of human behaviour can be collapsed into four quadrants)

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- His own signature at the end of the post

Is there anything in his background that separates this from the low-grade shlock that pollutes my Medium feed on a daily basis?

Nothing can be more destructive to a person's competence and skills than an abusive treatment by his superiors. As far as I'm concerned, the true test of leadership is dealing with a subordinate's shortcomings. It's not only about breaking your workers' spirits (and sometimes causing real psychological damage), but also about how to get the best out of your team, taking the abilities of each player into consideration.

Spoken like an A-player.

It is unfortunately not uncommon to find people who see the world as a fixed bag of A- vs. C-ers (and many of course whom think of themselves in the A category.)

But this is a fixed mindset and I think it correlates (when you get down to it) to one's own private/personal sense of their ability to grow.

You really want to become a rockstar/master/A-player? Don't define yourself by your skill set. Always keep a clear focus on that wide gap between you and what you could be. In other words, always think of yourself as a B-player trying to get to A. Know you'll never get there, but keep trying. Do this, and you'll reach excellence.

You'll also see how little difference there is between you and the "C-"...and then you can collaborate on helping each other toward mastery.

This post touched on an interesting part of human nature. So much of our personality and behavior is based on the identity that we create for ourselves. Most of that gets set in early childhood, but we keep adding to it with our latest experiences at work, with friends, dating, etc.

"Girl didn't like me? Maybe I'm not attractive." Have that experience enough times and it becomes a part of how you view yourself (i.e. your Identity) and you'll behave accordingly. A lot us struggle with identity issues that cause us to act out in unproductive ways, particularly when we're treated badly (like as if we're a c-player the author points out).

I think treating people with respect and giving them the benefit of the doubt as the author advocates is spot on, which is what I suspect is what he meant by treating c-players as a-players.

What I don't think the author meant was that we should treat ALL c-players like a-players as that sounds like an oversimplification. It would only help if someone is actually high potential and their ego and self-esteem issues get in their way. That's far from the only reason people perform poorly. Quite often, someone is simply less capable than the top performers (that flows from the definition of "top" performance). And yes, with experience and practice, people can improve. And it's good to assume they will and give them the guidance they need to get there.

But if you treat someone as if they're better than they really are, they might feel better about themselves but they could also loose the motivation to improve because they're getting the signal that "they're already there" and they'll start to develop a distorted self-image that could lead to other kinds of problems.

People try to live up to the expectations you set for them. From kids to adults. Expect people to be excellent, ask how you can help when they are behind (helps validate the expectation) and celebrate excellent results.

I remember listening to a 30 year old manager say you can't turn a C player into a B or a B into an A. That's a poor attitude for a manager.

You know you're in for a good ride when,

"This is so pronounced that if I were to evaluate myself 15 or even 10 years ago, I wouldn’t recognize myself as an A-player. I simply wasn’t one. And yet here I sit looking down at my previous self."

The post fails to define an A, B, or C player, so it felt like a harangue about nothing. Frankly I don't believe that measurement along one axis can capture an individual's impact. Also, discussion of an organization's effects on one's output and attitude is notably absent. Only the manager-direct report relationship is considered.

Isn't the real problem that B player managers do treat their C player reports like A players, and that both of them believe it ?

I recognize that I'll never be Jeff Dean or Sanjay Ghemawat. That's okay, though. There's a much smaller set of things I'm really good at, like debugging. I also get paid acceptably well.

There's a few 10x engineers out there, which I would call A players, but I've only met a couple of them in my lifetime.

Great article. I very much agree with all the points made, and see a lot of myself in the author's hindsight about themselves.

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