Ray Dalio & Bill Belichick on Building Great Teams

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: ---------------------------------------- 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: Principles | Your Guided Journal: Principles for Success, distills Principles into an easy-to-read and entertaining format for readers of all ages: Download his free app: Connect with him on Facebook: Follow him on Twitter: Follow him on LinkedIn: Follow him on Instagram: Follow him on TikTok: @principlesbyraydalio