111.Remember that when it comes to assessing people, the two biggest mistakes are being overconfident in your assessment and failing to get in synch on that assessment. Don’t make those mistakes.

  • 111A. Get in synch in a non-hierarchical way regarding assessments.

  • The greatest single discrepancy between a manager and a managee is how well each performs his job. In most organizations, evaluations run in only one direction, with the manager assessing the managee. The managee typically disagrees with the assessment, especially if it is worse than the employee’s self-assessment, because most people believe themselves to be better than they really are. Managees also have opinions of managers that in most companies they wouldn’t dare bring up, so misunderstandings and resentments fester. This perverse behavior undermines the effectiveness of the environment and the relationships between people. It can be avoided by getting in synch in a high-quality way.

  • 111B. Learn about your people and have them learn about you with very frank conversations about mistakes and their root causes.

  • You need to be clear in conveying your assessments and be open-minded in listening to people’s replies. This is so they can understand your thinking and you can open-mindedly consider their perspectives. So together you can work on setting their training and career paths. Recognizing and communicating people’s weaknesses is one of the most difficult things managers have to do. Good managers recognize that while it is difficult in the short term, it actually makes things easier in the long term, because the costs of having people in jobs where they can’t excel are huge. Most managers at other companies dodge being as open with assessments as we insist on; more typically, managers elsewhere tend to be less frank in conveying their views, which is neither fair nor effective.

112.Help people through the pain that comes with exploring their weaknesses.

Emotions tend to heat up during most disagreements, especially about someone’s possible weaknesses. Speak in a calm, slow, and analytical manner to facilitate communication. If you are calm and open to others’ views, they are less likely to shut down logical exchanges than if you behave emotionally. Put things in perspective by reminding them that their pain is the pain that comes with learning and personal evolution—they’re going to be in a much better place by getting to truth. Consider asking them to go away and reflect when they are calm, and have a follow-up conversation in a few days.

113.Recognize that when you are really in synch with people about weaknesses, whether yours or theirs, they are probably true.

Getting to this point is a great achievement. When you reach an agreement, it’s a good sign you’re there. This is one of the main reasons why the person being evaluated needs to be an equal participant in the process of finding truth. So when you do agree, write it down on the relevant baseball card. This information will be a critical building block for future success.

114.Remember that you don’t need to get to the point of “beyond a shadow of a doubt” when judging people.

Instead, work toward developing a mutually agreed “by-and-large” understanding of someone that has a high level of confidence behind it. When necessary, take the time to enrich this understanding. That said, you should not aim for perfect understanding. Perfect understanding isn’t possible, and trying to get it will waste time and stall progress.

115.Understand that you should be able to learn the most about what a person is like and whether they are a “click” for the job in their first year.

You should be able to roughly assess someone’s abilities after six to 12 months of close contact and numerous tests and getting in synch about them. A more confident assessment so that you can make a more confident role assignment will probably take about 18 months. This timeline will, of course, depend on the job, the person, the amount of contact with that person, and how well you do it. As I will explain in the section on design, the ratio of senior managers to junior managers, as well as the ratio of managers to the number of people who work two levels below them, should be small enough to ensure quality communication and mutual understanding. Generally, that ratio should not be more than 1:10, preferably more like 1:5.

116.Continue assessing people throughout their time at Bridgewater.

You will get to know them better, it will help you train and direct them, and you won’t be stuck with an obsolete picture. Most importantly, assess what your people’s core values and abilities are and make sure they complement Bridgewater’s. Since core values and abilities are more permanent than skills, they are more important to ascertain, especially at Bridgewater. As mentioned, you should be able to roughly assess people’s abilities after six to 12 months of close contact and confidently assess them after 18 months.

Don’t rest with that evaluation, however. Always ask yourself if you would have hired them for that job knowing what you now know. If not, get them out of the job.

117.TRAIN AND TEST PEOPLE THROUGH EXPERIENCES

118.Understand that training is really guiding the process of personal evolution.

It requires the trainee to be open-minded, to suspend ego in order to find out what he is doing well and poorly, and to decide what to do about it. It also requires the trainer to be open-minded (and to do the other things previously mentioned). It would be best if at least two believable trainers work with each trainee in order to triangulate views about what the trainee is like. As previously explained, the training should be through shared experiences like that of a ski instructor skiing with his student—i.e., it should be an apprentice relationship.

119.Know that experience creates internalization.

A huge difference exists between memory-based “book” learning and hands-on, internalized learning. A medical student who has “learned” to perform an operation in his medical school class has not learned it in the same way as a doctor who has already conducted several operations. In the first case, the learning is stored in the conscious mind, and the medical student draws on his memory bank to remember what he has learned. In the second case, what the doctor has learned through hands-on experience is stored in the subconscious mind and pops up without his consciously recalling it from the memory bank. People who excel at book learning tend to call up from memory what they have learned in order to follow stored instructions. Others who are better at internalized learning use the thoughts that flow from their subconscious. The experienced skier doesn’t recite instructions on how to ski and then execute them; rather, he does it well “without thinking,” in the same way he breathes without thinking. Understanding these differences is essential. Remember that experience creates internalization. Doing things repeatedly leads to internalization, which produces a quality of understanding that is generally vastly superior to intellectualized learning.

120.Provide constant feedback to put the learning in perspective.

Most training comes from doing and getting in synch about performance. Feedback should include reviews of what is succeeding and what is not in proportion to the actual situation rather than in an attempt to balance compliments and criticisms. You are a manager, and you want your machine to function as intended. For it to do so, employees must meet expectations, and only you can help them to understand where they are in relation to expectations. As strengths and weaknesses become clearer, responsibilities can be more appropriately tailored to make the machine work better and to facilitate personal evolution. The more intensely this is done, the more rapid the evolutionary process will be. So you must constantly get in synch about employee performance.

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