How to Know What You and Those You Interact with are Like

I presume that we can agree that it would be very valuable to have objective and accurate assessments of what you and the people you interact with are like, and to have clear guidance about how you should interact based on what you and they are like. In my own experience, I found that there were no clear paths to getting this invaluable information and that figuring out how to get it was essential in building my company, Bridgewater. In my book Principles: Life & Work I explained my pursuit of this understanding and the tools that I built to help me and Bridgewater gain it. Since I published the book, many people have asked me to pass along the tools that I described in it. Because of these requests, I had some of the tools reengineered and improved so they could be used by lots of people outside Bridgewater in a secure way and be even better than they were when I wrote the book. The first two of these tools that I will be passing along are PrinciplesYou, which is free, and Principles Dot Collector.

PrinciplesYou is a personality profile test that helps people understand themselves and understand others they are interacting with. I’ve found psychometric tests to be invaluable in understanding different people’s different approaches to thinking and that achieving that understanding is invaluable for people’s personal development, finding their right job fit, and building teams.  

In the past, I used a number of personality profile tests because I never found one that gave me everything I was looking for. For that reason over the last couple of years, I engaged three great psychometricians - Adam Grant, Brian Little and John Golden - to work with me to build a test that takes about 40 minutes and provides far more comprehensive descriptions of people's thinking preferences than any other tests of comparable length. It also provides better interpersonal guidance to pairs and/or groups of people who take it.  

At this stage in my life, my main goal is to pass along to others what has been valuable to me. In my many years of running many teams, I found that nobody has it all - that everyone is strong and weak in different ways and that people have different approaches to thinking -and that recognizing this is essential for individual and group success. I believe PrinciplesYou is a great first big step toward knowing these things. That’s why I’m thrilled to announce that this assessment is now available for free to everyone here and that the Principles Dot Collector is available for enterprises here, which provides continuous real time feedback and insights about what people are thinking. If you’re interested in this subject and would like to listen to a lively discussion I had with Angela Duckworth and Adam Grant about what people are like and how they should be with each other, you can view it here.