Written By Cari Borden

Let’s talk about the A, B, and C player labeling game.

It’s tidy. Convenient. And, honestly? Lazy.

These labels have become a corporate shortcut, an excuse to sort people like bins of produce. A players get promotions. B players get tolerated. C players get pushed out.

But here’s the thing no one’s talking about: Why aren’t we evaluating the leaders who are supposed to be developing these people?

Sure, not everyone is a fit. That’s real. But “fit” is a completely different conversation than “failure.” Too often, organizations stop at labeling someone a C player, as if they’ve reached their final form. No one asks:
➡️ What do they need to succeed here?
➡️ What haven’t they been taught yet?
➡️ Who’s responsible for helping them grow?

If you’re proud to lead a team of all A players, congratulations. But before you start polishing that trophy, ask yourself:
Did you build them, or just inherit them?

Here’s the real talk:
📉 Leaders who can’t lift a C to a B or, a B to an A, aren’t leading.
📚 Learning & Development programs often skip the most human part of leadership: coaching.

We teach managers how to measure, but not how to mentor.
We train them to manage performance, but not how to develop it.

And when people fail, we fire them instead of figuring out why they were never set up to win in the first place.

Here’s a thought: what if your so, called C player just needed someone to understand their wiring before deciding their worth?

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Want to Learn How to Coach Smarter, Not Just Harder?

✅ Start with my Leadership Quadrant Assessment. It’s a quick way to understand how you lead and how your team thinks. You might be surprised who you’ve been labeling incorrectly.

✅ Need help navigating coaching, feedback, or even deciding if someone can be coached up or should be coached out? Find me on Fiverr. I offer no-fluff mentoring that helps you see the whole person, not just their performance score.

✅ And if this hit home, make sure you subscribe to the blog for more tips, tough truths, and coaching tools you can actually use.

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Leadership isn’t about sorting people into categories. It’s about lifting the ones willing to rise.
And that starts with leaders who are actually equipped to lead.