DAVE HARDY
Transformative Leadership / Brand Strategy / Creative Direction

Steal These Ideas

Being bold isn’t easy. If it were, we’d see the evidence of it among the many and not the few. As a student of brand and creative strategy, I see the product of the connection between our fears and our tendency to embrace mediocrity. With 25 years building brands and teams in the agency space, I want to explore ways to see challenges as opportunities and to discover how to harness what holds us back.

A and C Players

As a leader of a team, explore a thought experiment. Would you rate the members of your team as A players or C players? You may have noticed that the letter B is not an option. That's because, given the choice, most people would select the middle or safe route to avoid conflict. However, this creates a lack of clarity.

Once defined, ask if would you be prepared to lose your A players for your C players. The answer is obviously no. Yet leaders often fall into the trap of spending more time stepping in and lifting up their underperforming people than spending time growing their star players.

If you are an A player on a team, how would you feel if your manager spent more time coaching and mentoring others who are underperforming? You would likely look for other opportunities for growth.

The goal of this tool is for a leader to identify C players who are taking time away from A players. This conversation is best to bring up when you start to sense a failure to performance manage quickly and effectively.

Leadership, Creative Strategy, Brand StrategyDave Hardy