Jess Lee / Polyvore
- Sequoia partner Jess Lee shared some tips for evaluating partners and employees.
- Lee said her system measures someone’s emotional, intellectual, political, and judgmental ability.
- No one is good at all of them, she said, so it’s all about finding people who complement each other.
The world’s top leaders often say they can read people better than anyone else — a trait that has long intrigued psychologists and management experts.
Some call it an art, others say it’s a science.
Sequoia partner Jess Lee — a Silicon Valley veteran who previously worked at Google and Yahoo, and founded the e-commerce company Polyvore, which Yahoo acquired for $200 million in 2015 — shared some of her secrets on a recent episode of “The Library of Minds” podcast.
Lee said she now relies on a process to evaluate workers beyond quantifiable metrics, which she learned from her Sequoia colleague Shawn Maguire. He told her there are four components he uses to evaluate people’s capabilities.
“It’s this framework of EQ and IQ, which everyone knows, emotional intelligence and intellectual intelligence,” she said. “Then he added PQ, political quotient, and JQ, judgment quotient.”
EQ, or emotional quotient, measures how good someone is with people one-on-one, she said. It measures emotional intelligence, social skills, and empathy. IQ, or intellectual quotient, measures someone’s problem-solving skills and logic. These are both well-known metrics in business and other fields.
PQ, or political quotient, meanwhile, measures how good someone is at interacting with systems of people that govern things, she said. The judgment quotient measures an individual’s decision-making capabilities.
Lee said no one is good at all of these things. It’s possible to have a high EQ but a low PQ within a given organization, she said. A person can be technically competent but struggle to assess where to apply their skills to maximize their long-term success.
“I look for very spiky people who complement each other,” she said.
Some of what she learned about evaluating people came from her father, who worked for Li Ka-shing, a Hong Kong tycoon whose net worth tops $41 billion, according to Forbes.
Her father’s work stories always revolved around people, Lee said.
“He kind of taught me that all problems are people problems. All solutions are people problems,” she said.
Even now, the “primary lens” she uses to “view the world, to figure out teams, to invest” is through people, she said.
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