Page 280 - Ray Dalio - Principles

• Tough love is effective for achieving

both great work and great

relationships.

To give you an idea of what I mean by tough love, think of
Vince Lombardi, who for me personified it. From when I was
ten years old until I was eighteen, Lombardi was head coach
of the Green Bay Packers. With limited resources, he led his
team to five NFL championships. He won two NFL Coach of
the Year awards and many still call him the best coach of all
time. Lombardi loved his players and he pushed them to be

great. I admired, and still admire, how uncompromising his
standards were. His players, their fans, and he himself all
benefited from his approach. I wish Lombardi had written out
his principles for me to read.

a. In order to be great, one can’t compromise the uncompromisable. Yet I
see people doing it all the time, usually to avoid making others

or themselves feel uncomfortable, which is not just backward
but counterproductive. Putting comfort ahead of success
produces worse results for everyone. I both loved the people I
worked with and pushed them to be great, and I expected them
to do the same with me.

From the very beginning, I felt that the people I worked
with at Bridgewater were a part of my extended family. When

they or members of their families got sick, I put them in touch
with my personal doctor to make sure that they were well
taken care of. I invited all of them to stay at my house in
Vermont on weekends and loved it when they took me up on
it. I celebrated their marriages and the births of their children
with them and mourned the losses of their loved ones. But to

be clear, this was no lovefest. We were tough on each other
too, so we could all be as great as we could be. I learned that
the more caring we gave each other, the tougher we could be
on each other, and the tougher we were on each other, the
better we performed and the more rewards there were for us to
share. This cycle was self-reinforcing. I found that operating
this way made the lows less low and the highs higher. It even