The Trust Battery

Tobi Lütke, the CEO of Shopify, has a metaphor for professional relationships: the Trust Battery. When you join a new team, your battery with every colleague starts at 50%. From that moment on, every interaction either charges it or drains it.

Delivering a feature on time charges it. Showing up to a meeting unprepared drains it. Owning a mistake and fixing it charges it. Ignoring a teammate's request for help drains it. None of these are big moments — but they compound, and over time they determine whether people trust your judgment, follow your lead, and rely on your decisions.

What makes the metaphor useful is how it reframes conflict. When a relationship is strained, it's not a personality clash — it's that the battery is low. Too many drains, not enough charges, and there's no power left for collaboration. When the battery is full, disagreements get resolved quickly, feedback lands well, and work moves. When it's empty, everything stalls — code reviews slow down, decisions get relitigated, and small frictions become big ones.

Technical skills determine what you're capable of building. The trust battery determines whether the people around you will let you build it.