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The trust battery: A handy metaphor to think about trust

The trust battery illustration with a manager considering 2 employees based on their past interactions

We know it intuitively: we trust each person we meet to varying degrees. The trust battery is a metaphor that helps you think about and visualise these trust levels.

The concept is from Tobi Lütke, the CEO of Shopify . He explains, for example, that when a new colleague joins your company the trust battery between the two of you may start out at around 50%. Each time the new colleague acts in a way that earns your trust that level increases, and if they let you down the trust battery level goes down. It can be long and slow to fill up the trust battery yet quick to drain. Each time we interact with someone we are subconsciously considering the level of their trust battery and that level affects how we respond to people.

Lütke says at Shopify they found it a useful way to surface and talk about trust in reviews without it feeling too personal.

Also see:

I learned about it from the excellent book It Doesn’t Have to be Crazy at Work

Published 18 May 2019

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Keep exploring

Jevon's paradox: 2 people, looking over a busy road from a balcony, remark how everyone's driving everywhere now that cars are so efficient

Jevon’s Paradox

Goodhart's law illustration showing a manager frustrated by 1000's of tiny nails when measuring on number of nails made, and pulling their hair out when presented with giant nails when measuring on weight

Goodhart’s Law: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

Don't fill the silence illustration: Someone does much better at eliciting a more in-depth response by simply waiting after asking their question rather than filling in an awkward silence

Don't fill the silence

Phubbing illustration: Someone sat in a cafe being phubbed by their friends on their phones while a parent and child walks by, gently heartbroken by being upstaged by a phone

The Trust Equation illustration: set out as a mathematical equation, we understand that the trust we have in someone professionally is proportional to how credible they are in their field, how dependable they are and how safe you feel around them. That trust is inversely proportional to how self-orientated they are.

The trust equation

Jevon's paradox is that improvements in fuel efficiency tend to increase fuel use, not decrease it as you might expect. In 1865, a chap named William Stanley Jevons noted that while there had been a number of improvements in coal efficiency in steam engines and the like, the effect was to increase consumption instead of reduce it. This observation became known as Jevon's paradox. While it’s not a surefire outcome, there are plenty of parallels like more efficient batteries leading to more overall battery use, washing machines leading to doing more washes rather than less time spent washing, or the ability to recycle some plastics leading to more overall plastic consumption. In her book More Work for Mother, Ruth Cowan addresses the ironies of household technology and how improvements in the efficiency of household devices often led to more work, not less. This is sometimes known as the rebound effect. Also see: the fifth fuel: energy efficiency save some landfill the automation paradox…Jevon's paradox is that improvements in fuel efficiency tend to increase fuel use, not decrease it as you might expect. In 1865, a chap named William Stanley Jevons noted that while there had been a number of improvements in coal efficiency in steam engines and the like, the effect was to increase consumption instead of reduce it. This observation became known as Jevon's paradox. While it’s not a surefire outcome, there are plenty of parallels like more efficient batteries leading to more overall battery use, washing machines leading to doing more washes rather than less time spent washing, or the ability to recycle some plastics leading to more overall plastic consumption. In her book More Work for Mother, Ruth Cowan addresses the ironies of household technology and how improvements in the efficiency of household devices often led to more work, not less. This is sometimes known as the rebound effect. Also see: the fifth fuel: energy efficiency save some landfill the automation paradox

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