Don’t Take Your A-Players For Granted

Don’t Take Your A-Players For Granted

From Shannon Waller's Team Success by Shannon Waller

March 5, 2026 · 15 min

About this episode

Shannon Waller discusses the importance of valuing A-Players and provides a formula to ensure they feel appreciated and rewarded.

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. Download Episode Transcript 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…

People in this episode

Host: Shannon Waller

Topics covered

  • A-Players
  • employee appreciation
  • talent retention
  • management strategies
  • workplace culture

Keywords

  • A-Players
  • employee engagement
  • talent management
  • appreciation
  • workplace retention

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