- The speaker thanks Ray for writing a book that they find educational and helpful.
- They discuss how they had similar principles in building organizations and teams.
- They talk about the challenges of managing a growing company and the need for inventiveness.
- The speaker mentions the importance of communication and writing down principles.
- They discuss the importance of being direct and giving honest feedback in a constructive way.
- The speaker talks about the balance between being tough and showing love in leadership.
- They mention the importance of addressing weaknesses and working to improve them.
- They discuss how personal criticism can be destructive and should be avoided.
- The speaker mentions the importance of failure and learning from past mistakes.

- The speaker reflects on a past failure and states that pain plus reflection equals progress.
- The speaker and the person being interviewed discuss their experiences with failure and how it has shaped their approach to success.
- They emphasize the importance of selecting the right people for their organizations and the need to treat people the same on the way out as on the way in.
- They discuss the importance of analyzing mistakes and making improvements in order to succeed.
- They also highlight the need to play to strengths and protect weaknesses in order to be successful.

- The speaker discusses the importance of owning mistakes and learning from them.
- They mention that some people are more used to being handled with kid gloves and find it difficult to own their mistakes.
- The speaker emphasizes the need to address issues and identify problems in order to make necessary adjustments.
- They discuss different ways of delivering criticism based on the individual player's personality and confidence levels.
- The speaker talks about the importance of including everyone, even star players, in criticism to maintain team unity.
- They mention that some players may have a lack of confidence and need reassurance and guidance to improve.
- The speaker discusses the challenges of dealing with rookies who may have an arrogant mindset coming from college.
- They emphasize the importance of clearly defining roles and responsibilities within an organization.
- The speaker talks about the importance of generosity in relationships and how it goes beyond trust in defining strong connections.

- The speaker emphasizes the importance of treating people with respect and generosity, both on the way in and on the way out.
- The speaker values lifelong relationships and the sacrifices made for each other.
- The speaker believes in learning from others, including players and students.
- The speaker discusses different types of toughness in football and the importance of executing assignments under pressure.
- The speaker mentions the need for various qualities in different positions and the importance of focusing on the most important ones.
- The main principles for success mentioned are: do your job, work hard, pay attention to details, and put the team first.

- The speaker emphasizes the importance of ignoring external noise and focusing on performing one's job.
- They mention that social media can be a source of unnecessary feedback and opinions from people who don't have intimate knowledge of the situation.
- The speaker believes that building relationships with teammates and those directly involved in performance is more important than external relationships.
- They highlight four principles for learning and development: putting the team first, job security being tied to team success, continuous improvement, and hard work.
- The speaker defines leadership as doing one's job and putting the team first, regardless of one's leadership style.

The speaker and the person being interviewed discuss various principles for success, including the importance of communication, giving honest feedback, and addressing weaknesses. They emphasize the need for learning from failure and treating people with respect and generosity. The speaker also discusses the challenges of managing different personalities and the importance of clearly defining roles and responsibilities. They highlight the principles of doing one's job, working hard, paying attention to details, and putting the team first. Additionally, they stress the importance of ignoring external noise and focusing on performance. Leadership is defined as doing one's job and prioritizing the team.

Since I released my book Principles: Life & Work, several remarkably successful people from all walks of life contacted me telling me that they used basically the same principles across domains and asked me if I would brainstorm with them about principles for success. This led to my having incredibly interesting and valuable conversations that I want to pass along to you so you can get the best possible principles for success. 

This first conversation is with one of the greatest football coaches and team builders in history, Bill Belichick, who just earned his 300th career win. After he read Principles he called me and said, “Mine are remarkably similar. Can we chat?” I asked him if we could record it for others to hear and he said sure, so here you go. We sat down before the start of this season to talk about building great teams and how failure is the most valuable part of the path to achieving great success, which is especially interesting as this season has been a challenging one so far. Our long conversation was edited down to a 45-minute piece, which I also broke up into short clips that I will pass along separately. 

Get the book, Principles: Life & Work, here: https://amzn.to/2JMewHb 
---------------------------------------- 

Key Sections: 
00:00 Introduction 
01:59 Going From Nothing to Something Big 
05:10 Tough Love 
09:42 Learning from Failure 
12:31 Picking People 
16:39 Identifying and Addressing Mistakes 
20:53 The Art of Giving Feedback 
25:49 Dealing with Arrogant Players 
27:08 Having Great Relationships 
33:53 The Psychology of the Team 
35:00 Toughness 
39:07 Bill’s Most Important Principles for Success 
42:54 Learning and Development 
---------------------------------------- 

More on Ray Dalio: 
Ray Dalio is the founder and CIO Mentor of Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund in the world. He is the author of #1 New York Times Bestseller and #1 Amazon Business Book of the Year, Principles. Dalio has appeared on the Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world as well as the Bloomberg Markets list of the 50 most influential people. He lives with his family in Connecticut. 

Principles from this conversation: 
04:03: Write down your Principles 
04:48: Accept coaching and take positive action 
07:14: Strengthen your weakness to compete 
07:54: Avoid the personal at all costs 
09:38: If you don’t address your weaknesses, your opponents will 
10:34: Pain + Reflection = Progress 
10:55: Job security is based on performance 
12:17: It’s either the pain of preparation or the pain of failure 
12:31: Picking People 
13:10: Define the role clearly and “hear the click" 
13:57: Treat people the same on the way out as you did on the way in 
14:38: Have clear specifications 
15:25: If you know what somebody is like, you know what you can expect from them 
15:32: Know what can improve through training and what can’t 
17:47: Ask: Who should do what differently? 
18:03: Diagnose your mistakes to get at the root cause 
18:44: Play to your strengths and protect your weaknesses 
20:11: Willingness to own mistakes is a key marker of success 
21:38: If you don’t address the issue, you’ll have confusion about the problem 
23:41: Great leaders welcome criticism 
24:59: Put your compliments and criticisms in perspective 
28:34: Be generous and expect generosity from others 
29:19: Know where the line is and be on the far side of fair 
31:14: Cultivate meaningful work and meaningful relationships 
32:45: Learning goes both ways 
34:30: Prioritize execution 
39:20: Do your job, work hard, pay attention to details & put the team first 
39:33: Put the mission first 
40:35: Ignore the noise 
40:50: Focus on your performance 
42:04: Focus on the important relationships 
43:19: There’s no substitute for hard work 
43:43: Leadership is doing your job and putting the team first 
---------------------------------------- 

For more from Ray Dalio: 
Principles | #1 New York Times Bestseller: https://amzn.to/2JMewHb 
Principles | Your Guided Journal: https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Your-Guided-Journal-Create/dp/1668010194?ref_=ast_sto_dp 
Principles for Success, distills Principles into an easy-to-read and entertaining format for readers of all ages: https://amzn.to/34lgnNJ 
Download his free app: https://principles.app.link/PFS 
Connect with him on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/raydalio 
Follow him on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/raydalio 
Follow him on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raydalio/ 
Follow him on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/raydalio/ 
Follow him on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@principlesbyraydalio

This is very educational, and the way that you put your story, principles, into words in a very helpful, constructive way for somebody like myself.

I can't thank you enough for writing this.

Well, I'm glad that you found it helpful.

You know, when you first called and we started to have a conversation, I think we spoke for something like an hour.

And what struck me is that like, no matter what we were talking about, we had the same principles, but in 2 different domains.

So, you know, like we were talking, how do you build an organization?

It was literally principle after principle after principle.

The first few, those resonated, I felt like this is what I do and Ray has this in words and organized in a way that is the way I think about it.

And then each 1 leads to the next 1 and the interaction between what you created as the innovator and then transformed into a manager and how, you know, understanding how you can create a product but then manage the size of Bridgewater as a, you know, a total entity, not the 4 people you had when you started or whatever it was.

We're here today really to talk about not only what's a kick for us to talk about, but also to convey to others, like wow, you could do this thing or that.

I think the interesting thing, 1 of the most interesting things in the book was when you talk about going from what was it, a four-man, four-person company?

Well, it started me and another guy, yeah, 3 people.

The transformation of that and your role in that from being an investor to being a manager to all the other things in between.

So for my success it was a relationship of meaningful work and meaningful relationships.

But from a time management standpoint, Ray, when you spent your time trying to find the right investments, trying to find the right way to manage and maximize the returns to being responsible for 1,500 employees, There's no way you could spend the same amount of time managing the actual dollars as managing the people.

When you start and it's 2 or 3 people, and then you go to another level you I had to Invent a new way a new way a new way.

I remember when we got to 67 people that I would always give personalized gifts at the holiday season and I would always write everybody a long letter at the holiday season.

I remember 67 people and I remember I couldn't do it because it broke my back.

I mean just too much and then I knew that I was now going to another level.

And when I was going to that other level, I had to invent a new way of operating.

So going from the 3 to the 1,500 required a lot of different inventiveness.

And then communicating well, because when I went from the 67 who knew me and knew where I was coming from And then I had to go to another level.

Communications that same idea meritocracy.

That's why I started to write down principles.

Well, I wanted everybody to be in it with me.

So by doing the videos and taping everything so everybody could see, Then they could see what's being made.

And so it helped the idea of meritocracy, and then you write it down.

1 of the challenges that I found is to be totally straightforward with people.

That was 1 of the best things about your book was how direct you are and how you talked about leaving your ego at the door, giving honest feedback, constructive criticism, not being offended by really something that's trying to help you and being able to accept, in our case, being able to accept coaching, being able to accept instruction, and then taking positive action to improve it.

That's a big part of our culture, but the way you articulated it in the book was fantastic.

And it really showed a strong commitment to that.

That's obvious in Bridgewater, you do a lot of that.

The most challenging part was to be tough on tough love.

You know, you gotta be that toughness that then raises them to another level and then when you give it with love, you gotta give it with love.

And I felt the love but also the need for toughness.

And not everybody, you know, some people rise and they get the tough love and some people, you know, it hurts.

And so if you were communicating with people, can you communicate totally straightforward?

Can you say you don't have the maturity or you don't have the toughness?

I would say that's a weakness for you, that's an issue.

And that there's maybe a ability to work around the issue.

In my case, if you find somebody who's weak at something, but they're good at something else, You compare them with somebody who's good at what they're weak at in order to then So you put together they work as a team that way but still the recognition That you're weak at that thing.

So when you're dealing with people, maybe it's because they come to expect it, that I'm coming to a team and they're used to saying, okay, you're weak at this, you're strong at this.

Well, actually that's fairly easy Because our opponent are the guys on the other side of the field.

So whatever our weaknesses is, my weakness, another player's weakness, we're gonna be attacked by our opponents at that weakness.

So we all need to strengthen our weaknesses to compete against our opponents.

As long as it's direct, it's really with the idea of like, let's get better and beat our opponents.

I think the thing that I always try to avoid and is difficult is if it's personal.

The personal criticism is different than the professional criticism.

Here's how you need to, here's how I need to coach better.

When it gets personal, then that gets into another level that then I think is more destructive than constructive.

So we definitely avoid that at all costs because nothing's personal.

Sometimes I think in a non-sports environment, non-athletic environment, the people who come in might not react as well to that as in a sports environment because necessity makes it clear and you do it.

Sometimes it's more challenging than that.

We had a case where we rate all the different people, and for a lot of statistics and so on.

Some people can go through that, and some people can't go through that but it's it's okay here are your points and that's what it is, and what do you do to get better?

So it takes a certain kind of person in our environment to say, okay, that's where I am on the list, and what do I do about it?

I suspect it's more straightforward in your game.

I think the good thing is to be on the list, to be part of the New England Patriots.

And you either find ways to create more value for yourself on the team and in the organization or they replace you.

So I think all of us, most of all of us have been last on the list at some point in time.

But yeah, again, To me, the important thing is, you know, making a commitment to to get better.

And so, you know, is it hard to admit your weaknesses?

But again, if you don't address them, your opponents will.

So another thing about us we were talking about is failure.

Like in my case, I made a terrible call in the markets and whatever it is and I went broke and I lost money and I had to I went so broke I had to borrow $4,000 from my dad to take care of my family bills and so on.

But that goes down in my mind as 1 of the best experiences I had because I had to learn about, Okay, what do I do?

You know, and I've got this principle pain plus reflection equals progress.

Well, there were many along the way and of course, in the NFL, when you play every week, you have the success or failure.

So again, you learn that job security is based on performance and anything that gets in the way of performance affects your job security.

That was pretty evident again in Cleveland when I became a head coach.

After spending 12 years with the Giants and went to Cleveland, even though we went from a bad team when I got there, 3-13, to a very successful 11-5, 12-16 in 94.

Then a down year in 95, and that was the end.

So when I reflect back on the 5 years in Cleveland, I look at some of the things that I failed at that I needed to do better in the next opportunity.

Fortunately in New England, Robert Kraft and the Kraft family gave me an opportunity to resume a head coaching opportunity there in 2000.

And I tried to take a lot of the lessons that I'd learned from the Cleveland experience, which a lot of it was good, but again, the things that came up short, I tried to implement those in the new opportunity in New England, along with the supportive ownership.

Like, pain provides lessons many times, right?

See the pain on the front end or pain on the back end.

It's either the pain of preparation or the pain of failure.

Don't always avoid it on the back end, but do everything I can to not have the results be painful.

Well, I think that's the number 1 thing is to try to get right on the way in the door and understanding what you need and what you're looking for.

So as we like to say, if you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there.

So we try to define the path of what we're looking for in terms of the traits, the athletic qualities, the competitiveness and so forth, you know, by position and identify that and then try to select those people that we feel like will fit into our culture and into our program because it's so hard to change them if they don't have those qualities.

It's really hard to, you know, you can mold a little bit but it's hard to fundamentally change selfish to unselfish as an example.

So that's really the selection part of it is really important for us on the beginning.

And in our business, we start with 90 players and then we go to 53.

And 1 of the things that I learned from Jack Welch, 1 of his great axioms was treat them the same way on the way out as you treat them on the way in.

You're happy to have them on the way in, you love them on the way in, it doesn't work out, you feel the same way about them on the way out, unless there's been some extraordinary circumstance, but sometimes it just doesn't work out or you have to move on.

And it's probably your fault as much as it is anybody else's because you didn't select the right person.

But in the end, we move on and treat them the same as they way in as a way out.

But the selection process at the beginning really is the key to, I think, building the culture and building the organization that you want.

In our conversations, 1 of the things that I like about what you did, and which is what I do, is you get very clear on the specs.

And you know that people are different, and you make very clear distinctions of what somebody is like.

And we try to do the same thing, what it's like.

But you're really talking not just about skills.

You're talking about things like consideration, determination, And you were talking, we were talking about toughness, okay?

And all the different types of toughness, and you'll spec it out.

Same thing, try to spec it out so I know in detail.

Because if you know what somebody's like, you know how they're gonna perform in a job, right?

Right, and there's Some things you can change or improve, whether it be experience or technique or sometimes just maturity.

And then there are other things that are fundamentally very hard to change.

So, some things you get and then there's other things that you look at and say, okay, you know, we can adjust this.

But ultimately, if a player or a coach or, you know, whoever you bring into your organization has something that you feel like you are going to have to manage to a certain degree, then you have to ask yourself, are we capable of that?

We have the resources to help them with whatever it is that they need so that they can be successful.

And if the answer is no, then I think you just have to be realistic and say, okay, well then, you know, we're just, this isn't the right fit.

We need to move on and find somebody else.

And that's not always the easiest thing to identify, but when you can identify what the problem is, whether it be physical or, you know, some other, some other form that whether or not you, you have the resources organizationally to handle that.

Bill, what you do, you have a game Sunday, and You come and you look at the videos and you look at the mistakes made and you analyze the mistakes being and how to get better right

Yes, we do an assessment after every game.

We do an assessment an assessment after each period in the year.

So free agency, the off-season program, the draft, mini camps, things like that.

And the idea is really to look at what we did well and what caused that, what we didn't do well and what caused that.

What decisions were critical decisions and you know how those turned out and was there a flaw in the process or maybe a process helped us make the right decision depending on how it went and what were the critical errors What caused the critical errors in the game?

A critical penalty, a critical mental error, or a critical communication breakdown, whatever it was.

And we do that win or lose, it doesn't matter.

What we would do differently, if we face this opponent again, or an opponent with a similar type personnel, or similar scheme, how we would, And so just a full evaluation of everything that happened.

With The idea of making that better and not having the same thing next week on that sheet.

Not saying the same thing, well it was the same mistake we made last week, it was the same mistake we made last week, it was another communication mistake.

And try to eliminate those and continue to correct things and recognize what we did well.

Let's make sure that we continue to emphasize and do that because that's the reason why we won.

So it's not just eliminating mistakes, it's also trying to build in your strengths.

It's really pretty basic of any war or any counter.

Use your strengths and don't let your weaknesses bring you down.

Play to your strengths and protect your weaknesses.

So we do some of the things we actually video everything that's going on and then you could look at the video and then reflect on it.

And 1 of the things I found is that some people when they look at their mistakes react differently than other people when they look at their mistakes.

Again, we try to make it very professional.

And now, sometimes there's a disagreement about the mistake.

That was, you know, somebody instructed me to do that.

They made a call on the field or this is the way the coach explained it.

And then we have to get to the bottom of that like, all right Well, you were told the wrong thing or no, you thought they told you to do that That isn't what they were telling you to do, you know, whatever the communication breakdown is.

So Okay, people will easily own their mistakes.

There's some people who will not as well own their mistakes.

Again, every once in a while you'll get some situations where it's not clear cut exactly what went wrong.

Maybe a player didn't run a good route, and maybe it wasn't a good throw, and maybe there was a protection breakdown that caused the quarterback to not have, you know, and so maybe it's a combination of things.

I find a lot of people, not a lot, some, I think a very big differentiator between people who will own their mistakes and easily learn them.

And I suspect it's probably because of their use to, probably when they were growing up, in playing their game all the way through to when the time that they got there.

And in our case, people have to, some people are more used to being handled with kid gloves and, you know, and it's not as easy to be straightforward and saying okay, and then say I got it I own that mistake

Well, there's no question right that there's an art and and a differential between how you say something to somebody.

There's some players that, you know, you would put it 1 way and then there's other players you might put it a little bit differently to them or just do it in a little bit of a different setting.

Because again, if something goes wrong and nobody says anything, I don't know, does everybody...

Like, I might have done it right, but I think I did it wrong because it turned out badly.

We fix this problem, everybody else is good.

Everybody else keep doing what they're doing.

We just have to fix this 1 thing right here.

If you don't address the issue, then there's a confusion about what the problem was.

And so a lot of times, we'll come off the field, and let's say we're on defense.

We come off the field, and we give a play.

And a player will come over and say, that was my fault.

Sometimes we come off the field and it's like, OK, what happened on that play?

Like everybody was trying to do the right thing, but we have a problem here.

So we have to adjust the way we're doing it.

And so not all problems are directly somebody's fault.

Sometimes it's a combination of coaching or scheme that they did something that's a little bit tough in this situation, okay, here's how we're gonna have to handle it, we're gonna have to adjust the way that we're playing it.

And So it varies, but in the end, if you identify what the problem is, then the other guys know they're right and they can do what they're doing and you don't have that, I'm going to change.

But the way you're describing it is that that can be done in a very straightforward way.

The other thing you said before, though, is how you deliver it.

So I want to get good coaching from you on that.

Well, for example, with Tom, with Brady, if I was critical of the team and left him out, well, then when the offense walked out of the room, everybody would be kind of like, you know, like Belichick yelled at us, but they don't like Brady.

And so then it's hard for Brady to be a leader and say, well, come on, you guys.

And Tom would be like, look, you've got to include me in the criticism, too.

Otherwise, how can I go to my teammates and I'm not gonna put it on them?

And so I would include Tom in the criticism.

And Tom was like, don't leave me out, Otherwise, I don't have a platform to lead from

Oh, yeah for sure, but I'm saying like a true leader

I mean, that's you know, I I know when coach Knight coach the Olympic team.

I mean that was his number 1 guy Is he would yell at Jordan?

Well, everybody else like he's on Jordan.

I better get you know nobody was above it.

And so that—you know, there's a way to depend on who your players are.

But also you're thinking about the right thing, but you might have a player who gets pissed off because you're yelling at them or don't you get that?

Well yeah, it's less of being mad than it is lack of confidence.

You know, like, oh, my con, you know, it becomes a lack of confidence.

You know, and then sometimes you have to pull that player aside and say, look, you know, you just need to fix this.

I Think that's good coaching on coaching.

I Think you said a couple of things here.

I think that are important first of all That It's you affect you can hurt his confidence.

So it's not You're interpreting it in a very good way That you can hurt his confidence and the way that you've just phrased it Like you can do it and it'll be and you got the 90% and so on must help him get through it.

Some players, there's some players who couldn't destroy their confidence, I don't care what you do.

Then there's other players that really, even though they're good, They have a little bit of a they don't have as much confidence and so it varies from player to player

Do you get palliers that are too arrogant?

Oh, I would say sometimes when we get the rookies in from college There's a deep recruiting process that goes on Some of his players comes out in college, he gets drafted.

He's the best player on the team in college, right?

And he's playing against a lot of other bad players on other teams who are freshmen and so on.

Well, when you come to the National Football League, there's not too many rookies that are better than everybody.

So they quickly have to learn that if you do things the way you did them in college, it's not going to work here.

The other guys are faster than you guys are stronger You guys have more experience in you like you've got to find a way to do things right to be successful And so sometimes that process takes You know a little while to take a couple weeks.

Sometimes it could take a year of bad, bad results.

So there's a derecruiting, and I'm sure it's the same thing in college, some of the high school kids, big high school recruits, Some of them work out, some of them don't.

And part of it's because they think they're already just better than everybody else, but they're not.

Now, When you're dealing in an organization, you have the owner, you have the players.

Okay, now there's interpersonal relations.

How do you deal with those interpersonal relations?

Like probably, you know, the question, exactly who's in control, and somebody thinks you should do it 1 way, somebody thinks you should do it the other way.

Well, I think the most important thing in all that is to clearly define what everybody's job and role is.

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Ray Dalio & Bill Belichick on Building Great Teams