Are you an A-player or a B-player?

Ogunbowale Olugbenga
2 min readApr 8, 2022

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In every startup, there are humble, selfless individuals who want a challenge and are excited to help build a company from nothing. There will undoubtedly be long hours that creep into weekends. It takes a particular type of person who will not just be willing to put in the extra work but will welcome it. These are the team members that go above and beyond their job descriptions, sharing exciting ideas to spur growth, making smart recommendations and above all, delivering on their core assignment. These are the A-players.

The B-players are the very opposite of the A-players.

They consistently annoy management and their fellow team members either by being consistently lazy and/or incompetent, or by complaining about everything and everyone. They are the folks you cannot trust with a task, and the folks you need to constantly monitor to get anything done. These are the folks who are consistently looking for ways to scam the company out of resources and if you are not careful, they are the ones who will start their own business within your business.

To attract and cultivate a team of A-players, invest heavily in training. Every Monday, we have a training session at Grant Master where someone delivers training in an area they think we need to grow. Sometimes, it's inspiring YouTube videos. Sometimes, it’s online courses. Most people will do better if they know better. So, before you assume that the B-players on your team were sent to you by village people, try training them.

And just in case you are concerned your people will leave after investing so much in them, someone once asked Steve Jobs the exact same question ‘what if you train them and they leave?’ to which Steve replied, ‘what if we don’t train them and they stay?’

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