Your A-Players Are Already Looking: The Signals Most Leaders Miss

How do you know if your top performers are about to quit? You watch for the five signals — and you fix the management pattern that's pushing them out. Gallup's Q4 2025 data found 51% of U.S. workers are either actively looking or watching for opportunities — the highest since 2015. Most leaders assume it's their underperformers in motion. It's not. It's their A-players. And by the time you get the resignation letter, the decision was made months ago.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why the underperformers stay and the A-players leave — and what the math really costs you
• The 5 signals on your top performers you've been missing for months
• The real reason A-players quit (research is unambiguous — and it's almost never money)
• The 80/5 management trap that quietly bankrupts your best relationships
• The four moves to start this week, including the Stay Conversation most managers never run

Your A-player isn't leaving the company. They're leaving you. Stop the cascade before it starts.

The 5 Signals Your A-Player Is Already Looking (Colby Morris)

The behavioral signals to watch for on your top performers — months before the resignation letter:

1. They stopped pushing back on you
2. The work is still good, but the energy is gone
3. They stopped asking about what's next
4. They're suddenly more available, not less
5. They stopped fighting for their people

The Stay Conversation (Colby Morris)

A quarterly, deliberate conversation with your A-players built around three questions:

1. What would make you want to leave?
2. What's keeping you here?
3. What would change your mind about something we're doing?

Most managers never ask. Most A-players never get to answer until they're walking out the door.

When to apply this guidance:

• You manage at least one A-player you'd consider hard to replace
• You haven't had a deliberate retention conversation with your top performers in the last six months
• You suspect one of your best people has been quietly disengaging — but their output looks fine
• Your management calendar is dominated by your bottom 20% while your top 20% gets the leftovers
• You've been "blindsided" by a resignation before and never want to repeat it

Research referenced in this episode:

• Gallup, Q4 2025 U.S. Workforce Study: 51% of U.S. employees are either actively looking for a new job (11%) or watching for opportunities (40%) — the highest job-seeking rate since Gallup began tracking in 2015
• Gallup, 2021 Engagement Research: Even among engaged employees, 30% are still looking for new opportunities
• Gallup, State of the Global Workplace: 70% of the variance in team engagement is determined by the manager — not pay, not the company
• Multiple workforce studies (McKinsey, SHRM, Harvard): Top performers are approximately 4x more productive than average performers
• 2024 retention research: 94% of employees say they would stay longer at a company that invests in their learning and development

Related episodes:

• One-on-One Meetings That Work: Build Trust, Track Goals, and Transform Your Team
• When to Address Underperformance (Part 1 of 2)
• How to Hold Someone Accountable Without Micromanaging
• Performance Issue or Hiring Mistake? Make the Call

Connect with Colby Morris:

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/colbymorris 

Website: nxtstepadvisors.com

About The Things Leaders Do:

The Things Leaders Do is a weekly leadership podcast hosted by Colby Morris, Founder of NXT Step Advisors. The show delivers practical, immediately actionable leadership tools for middle managers and senior leaders navigating real workplace challenges. No corporate jargon, no theory you can't use — just real guidance you can implement before your next one-on-one. New episodes every Tuesday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts.

• Colby's LinkedIn Profile
• NXTStepAdvisors.com

Transcript

The Retention Math That Stings

SPEAKER_00 0:00

People first leadership. Actionable strategies, real results. This is Things Leaders Do with Colby Morris.

SPEAKER_01 0:11

Gallup just put out their Q4 2025 numbers. 51% of U.S. workers are either actively looking for a new job or watching for opportunities. Yeah, sit with that. 51%. That's actually the highest number Gallup has recorded since they started tracking this back in like 2015. Now, I know what you're going to do. You're going to read that and think, well, yeah, sure, but that's the workforce in general. That's not my team. My team is solid. Well, stay with me. Because here's where it gets uncomfortable. That same Gallup data found that even among engaged employees, you know, the ones who like their jobs, who are bought in, who you would absolutely swear are happy, 30% are still looking. Three out of every 10 of the people on your team that you would describe as doing great are quietly watching for something else. And here's the part that should land here. When your underperformers think about leaving, they wait it out. They send a few applications, nothing comes through. They stay because, well, they don't really have options. But your A players? Yeah. Different category entirely. They have recruiters in their LinkedIn DMs. They have a network. They have a phone number they could call this afternoon and have three conversations lined up by Friday. When A players decide to look, they don't sit around. They go. So here's what we're talking about today. The reality that you've been missing. The signals you've been failing to see on your top people, five of them very specific, that you can check against your actual team while we go through this. And then the real reason a players leave, which is almost never what you think it is. And what to actually do about it before you're standing in your office reading a resignation later going, I never saw this coming. Spoiler, you were never going to see it coming. You weren't looking. Yeah. Let me say that one again. You weren't looking. Hey leaders, this is Colby. Welcome back to the Things Leaders Do podcast. We're talking about something most leaders don't or won't admit they're doing wrong. And it's quietly costing them their best people. So let's get into it. So let's just sit in the math for a second. If you've got five direct reports, statistically, two to three of them are in some stage of looking right now. Not the, you know, thinking about it eventually, not if the right thing came along, but currently in motion, right now. That's the Gallup data applied to your actual team. And here's the thing: it's it's not random which ones. It's not the underperformer. Okay. The underperformer is staying. The underperformer needs this job. The underperformer doesn't get the LinkedIn message from a recruiter at a competitor. The underperformer is sitting at their desk thinking, I really hope they don't realize how little I'm doing this quarter. But your A players, well, they don't have that problem. Your A players have the opposite problem. They have so many recruiters in their inbox, they they had to mute three of them last month. Now here's what makes this expensive. And I'm not going to

Why Losing A Players Cascades

SPEAKER_01 4:22

spend a lot of time on cost because the title of this episode already implies that you're losing real money. But just for a second, when you lose your A player, you're not losing one person. Research has been pretty consistent on this for years. Top performers are, on average, about four times more productive than average performers. Four to one. So when your A player walks out the door, you didn't lose 20% of your team's headcount. You lost something closer to 80% of the team's productive output. Before the replacement even gets here, who, by the way, is going to take what six to 12 months to ramp up if they ever fully do. And here's the part that really hurts A players don't usually leave alone. They take people with them. Either directly, they get to their new companies six months in and start recruiting their old teammates to come join them, or indirectly. When your a player leaves, two or three other people on the team start reevaluating things because their a player teammate just made a move, which signals to them that maybe the grass is actually greener somewhere else. So now you've got, you know, a cascade, one departure, and three months later, you're looking at three. Then add the institutional knowledge that just walked out the door, the relationships they had with vendors, the cross-functional partners with your biggest client, the shortcuts they figured out, the context they'd built up over years that just lived in their head and was never documented. All gone with them to a competitor. That's the math. But now here's the bigger problem. By the time you find out your A player is leaving, the decision was made months ago. You're not finding out in real time. You're finding out at the end of a process that you didn't see. Three to six months of mental checkout, a round of recruiter conversations, a couple of late stage interviews, an offer accepted in a coffee shop on a Thursday, and then you get the email. Hey, do you have a few minutes today? Yeah, that's when you find out. And you walk back to your desk wondering what on earth you missed. So here's the answer to that question. A lot. And it was all in plain sight. So let's talk about what you should have been looking at.

Five Signals You Are Missing

SPEAKER_01 7:24

I want to give you five signals, and I want you to do something while I go through these. Pick your, let's say, two best people on your team, your real A players, your high performers, the ones who'd be the hardest to replace. Now hold them in your head. And as I describe each signal, I want you to be honest with yourself. Have you seen this on them? All right, signal one, they stopped pushing back on you. Your A players used to argue with you, right? They challenged your priorities, they they questioned your decisions, they told you when they thought you were wrong about something. And honestly, that's part of what made them a players in the first place. They they cared enough about the outcome to fight for what they thought was right. But when they go quiet, they didn't suddenly start agreeing with you. They didn't have an epiphany about your wisdom. They stopped caring whether you got it right. Because they're not planning to be there when the consequences land. All right, signal two. Now, this one's tricky because it looks like everything is fine. Output is still hitting, quality is still there. The deliverables, they're still, you know, landing on time. But the proactive emails stopped. The hey, have you considered you know, those type of Slack messages stopped? The ideas that they used to bring you from the shower or from a long drive, those have stopped. They're doing the job. I mean, they're not building the role anymore. They've separated the two, and that separation is the leading indicator of a departure. Think about it this way: six months ago, when you walked into the office, your A player might have grabbed you in the hallway to tell you about, you know, something they've been thinking about, an idea or a concern, right? We should probably look at this. But now they let you walk past. That work that hits their desk is done, but I mean, there's nothing really extra. There's no energy. They're they're outputting, but they're not investing. Does that make sense? All right, signal three. They stopped asking about what's next. Yeah, not a whole lot to say on this one, but your your A players used to ask about strategy, about next quarter, about the direction of the team, about whether they could lead the new initiative, you know, about whatever's coming. But now they don't. They show up and they do today's work and then they go home. But they've stopped asking about the future because honestly, they're not planning on being in it. And signal four, they're suddenly more available, not less. This one is something nobody usually notices. People in interview season are surgically careful with their calendars. They they start being unavailable at weirdly specific times. Quick dentist appointment Tuesday afternoon. Need to run an eleven you know, an errand at 11 a.m. on Thursday. Coincidentally, this happens about every other week. By the way, the corporate art of the phantom dentist appointment is the secret language of someone on their third round of interviews somewhere. The dentist is the cover story. The dentist has never been so popular. All right, signal five. They stop fighting for their people. Your A players are usually advocates, right? They push for their direct reports to get promoted, they fight for raises for their teammates, they walk into your office to complain politely, but pointedly, you know, when somebody under them got passed over for something. When they've checked out, that's that kind of stuff stops. They become quietly indifferent about their team's growth. They, you know, that all that advocacy, it dries up. Not because they they stop caring about their people, but because they've decided they're not going to be the one fighting that fight anymore. Somebody else is going to be doing it. And here's the thing: if you went through these five signals and you can think of two or three you know, people that you've seen, or maybe two or three uh that you've seen on the same person, yeah, you're not in the early innings. You're in the second half of the game. The clock started months ago.

The Real Reasons A Players Leave

SPEAKER_01 12:33

So, question, what why is this happening? Most leaders, when they finally do get that you know resignation letter, they assume one thing. It's gotta be money. Competitor offered them more. Bigger title, bigger bag. That's the story. The research is unambiguous on this, though. It is almost never the money. Gallup, McKinsey, every credible study on high performer attrition agrees. A players leave for three reasons career growth, manager relationship, and meaningful work. Money is rarely even in the top five. When money does come up in an exit interview, it's usually a polite cover story for the real reason, which is that they didn't feel invested in, challenged, or seen. So if it's not your competitors, who is it? Look, here is the contrarian truth at the center of this whole episode. And some of you are not gonna want to hear this. It's you. Specifically, it's how you spend your management time. Most managers operate on a default pattern that they've never even examined. Okay, 80% of your management energy goes to where the bottom 20% of your team, the underperformers, the problems, the squeaky wheels, the people whose work you have to review twice. The middle 60%, your steady contributors, get the leftovers, you know, that 15%. And your A players, they get the remaining what, five percent, maybe why? Because the A players are self-managing, they don't need anything, they're crushing it. So you turn your back to the dumpster fire. That's not management, y'all. That's neglect with a positive spin on it. Here's what your A players actually need from you that they're not getting. They need vision sharing, not okay, not the company-wide vision statement, but your specific read on where the team is going and why that matters. Without that, they're rowing a boat with no idea what shore they're rowing toward. They need challenge, real challenge. Okay, give me harder work, stretch me, put me on something that scares me a little. A players don't get satisfaction from coasting. Okay, coasting is what makes them leave. The thing that keeps them is the work that's just slightly too big for them. They need recognition, and not, you know, great job recognition, but specific recognition. The thing that says you actually saw what they did. Hey, the way you handled that client situation last, you know, Tuesday. I I noticed that you stayed late to draft that email, and the way you framed it, it kept the relationship intact, and that mattered. Yeah, that's recognition. Great work this quarter, that's wallpaper. They need investment in their growth, not just in their output. The difference is whether you're spending on them or just expecting from them. A players know the difference, and usually within about 90 days, and they need protection. They need to know that when they push the envelope, when they speak up in a meeting, when they take a risk on something, you'll take the heat for them. Okay, you'll use your political capital on their behalf. They need to know that they have an advocate and not just a manager. Without those five things, they're starving. The work still gets done because they're good. Okay, but the relationship is quietly drying up. And then one Thursday it just ends. And Gallup has a stat that should haunt every leader listening to this. Their research found that 70%, 70% of the variance in team engagement is determined by you guessed it, the manager, the leader, not the company, not the salary, not the benefits, the manager, you so when your a player leaves, they're not leaving the company. They're leaving you. Oh my god. That hurts, right? They're leaving you. All right.

Four Moves To Keep Them

SPEAKER_01 17:57

So what do you actually do? Four moves. Very specific, tactical, and you start this week. First, move one. Have the stay conversation. This is probably the most important habit you're not running. A stay conversation is different from a one-on-one, different from a review. It's deliberate, quarterly, and it asks three questions. One, what would make you want to leave? Two, what's keeping you here? And three, what would change your mind about something we're doing? Most managers never ask those questions. So most A players never get to answer them. Well, I mean, until they're walking out the door and you're trying to do an exit interview to figure out what went wrong. Run the conversation now before the answers matter. A few practical notes, real quick, on how to actually run this without making it weird. Set the meeting for like 30 minutes. Take it out of the office if you can. Coffee shop, walk, lunch, whatever. The change of setting signals that this isn't a status update. Okay. Be direct about what it is. Just say something like, I want to have a different kind of conversation with you. I want to understand what would keep you here long term and what wouldn't while we have time to do something about it. And then, this is the hard part. When they answer, don't defend, don't explain, don't justify, don't tell them you know why the things they're frustrated with isn't actually that bad. Just shut up and listen. Ask follow-up questions, take notes. The conversation is for information, not for resolution. Okay, resolution comes later. All right, the second move. Flip your time allocation. Okay, so in this second move, stop the 85 split, right? Try 50, 30, 20. Half of your management energy on your top 20%. Yeah, I know, but they're self-managing. No, they're not. Okay, they're starving, and you mistook the stylence for self-sufficiency. Look, I'm not saying ignore your underperformers. I'm saying when you look at your calendar for the week and your top performer hasn't gotten a single 30-minute block of your real attention, while you know, Bob the underperformer has gotten three. That's a problem. Not the underperformers' existence, the ratio. And I know what you're going to say, Colby, I have to spend that time on the underperformer. They're a problem. If I don't manage them, the whole team suffers. That's a fair point. It's a real point. But here's the thing: you might be solving the wrong problem. If the underperformer is consuming half of your management bandwidth quarter after quarter, you don't have a coaching situation. You have a different problem entirely. And the answer isn't to invest more time, it's to have a different conversation about whether this is the right role for them, the right place for them. Go listen to my underperformance episode from January if you need that playbook. But don't let the underperformers' gravity quietly bankrupt your relationship with the people who are currently actually carrying the team. And then move three invest visibly. 94% of employees say they would stay longer at a company that invests in their learning and development. 94%. I mean, that's what basically everyone. But here's the catch. They have to be able to see the investment. You telling them in a one-on-one, I see leadership potential in you, that that doesn't count. They have to be able to point to a specific thing you did for their growth in the last six months. You know, paid for the course, sent them to a conference, got them in the room with leadership two levels up. You gave them the stretch assignment that they weren't ready for. If your A player cannot point to a specific investment you made in the last six months, you have not invested. You have intended. All right. And then move four. Give them air cover upstream. Tell your boss publicly that this person is crushing it. Name them in front of leadership. Email your boss's boss with specific examples of what they did. Okay. Make sure their reputation lives upstream of you, not just because of you. Why does this matter? Because right now, when your A player is sitting across a coffee table being interviewed somewhere, the question in their head is: will my career grow faster here or somewhere else? Air cover from you is one of the few things that makes the answer here. So here's your challenge for the week.

Weekly Challenge And Next Steps

SPEAKER_01 23:46

Pick your top one or two A players, your top high performers, right now in your head, hold them there. Now answer honestly. When's the last time you had a real conversation with that person about anything other than the work? When's the last time you invested in their growth? Not just in what they produced for you this quarter. When's the last time you fought for them in a room they weren't in? If you can't remember, look, I'm gonna give it to you straight. You're not their manager, you're their work coordinator, and work coordinators can be replaced, which is, by the way, exactly what your A player is currently considering. The next time you see them this week, don't just check on the project, check on them. Ask the stay conversation questions, find out what you've been missing because the alternative is a resignation letter on a Thursday, the awkward, do you have a few minutes? And trying to figure out what went wrong six months too late. And one more thing. If you want the foundational habit that prevents most of this in the first place, go listen to the 101 Meetings at Work episode. It's one of the most listened to episodes on this show, and it's the prerequisite to everything we just talked about. And you can do this. If you're sitting on this episode going, Yeah, that's me. That's my team. Let's talk. I work with leaders one-on-one and with whole teams on the messy people stuff that doesn't show up in the strategy deck. You can find me at next stepadvisors.com or on LinkedIn. Both those links are in the show notes. And if this episode landed, do me a favor, subscribe to the show wherever you listen, and leave a review if you've got a minute. Share it with another leader who's about to be blindsided. And we we both know one. And remember, keep paying attention to the people who don't seem to need attention. Keep asking what they need from you. Because you have to ask why before you have to ask why they left. And keep treating retention as a leadership skill. Because if you don't, your competitors will. And you know why? Because those are the things that leaders do.

SPEAKER_00 26:21

Thank you for listening to Things Leaders Do. If you're looking for more tips on how to be a better leader, be sure to subscribe to the podcast and listen to next week's episode. Until next time, keep working on being a better leader by doing the things that leaders do.