Latest / Career Coaching with Fexingo: Professional Coaches, Career Counselors, and Guidance for Workers / How a Career Trust Battery Measures Your Work Relationships
Transcript
- Lucas: So you know that feeling when you walk into a meeting with a specific colleague and you just know — before anyone's said a word — that the conversation is going to be tense? Luna: Oh, absolutely. There's this one person at my last company — every time I saw their name on the calendar invite, my shoulders would tighten. Lucas: Right. And it's not because they're incompetent or mean. It's because the trust isn't there. Or more precisely, the trust battery is low. Luna: The trust battery — that's a great metaphor. Like a rechargeable battery that powers the relationship. Lucas: Exactly. And this is a concept I first heard from a product manager named Sarah — she works at a mid-size SaaS company in Chicago. She told me that she started visualizing every key work relationship as having a battery with a charge level from zero to a hundred percent. Luna: So it's a mental model for measuring trust? Quantifying something that's usually squishy and emotional? Lucas: That's exactly it. She was struggling with her VP of Engineering — every one-on-one felt adversarial. She was performing well, her projects were on time, but the meetings were draining. So she sat down and asked herself: what determines the battery level? She came up with four main deposit categories. Luna: Okay, I'm taking notes. What are they? Lucas: First is reliability — do you do what you say you'll do, when you say you'll do it. Second is transparency — are you open about your reasoning, your constraints, your mistakes. Third is competence — do you know your stuff and can you execute. And fourth is alignment — do you share the same goals and values, at least on this project. Luna: Reliability, transparency, competence, alignment. That's a good mnemonic — R-T-C-A. Or maybe we call it the Trust Quadrant. Lucas: I like that. So Sarah mapped each of her relationships against those four dimensions. For the VP of Engineering, she realized her reliability and competence were high — she always delivered. But her transparency was medium, and alignment was low. She and the VP had different definitions of what 'done' meant. He wanted polished, she wanted iterative. Luna: That disconnect alone could drain the battery. So what did she do? Lucas: She started making intentional deposits. She scheduled a fifteen-minute alignment check-in every Monday, just to sync on definitions. She also started being more transparent about her uncertainty — instead of saying 'I'll have it done by Friday,' she'd say 'I'm targeting Friday, but there's a risk it slips to Monday because of the API dependency.' That small shift rebuilt credibility. Luna: It's such a simple adjustment, but it changes the dynamic from hiding risk to sharing risk. That transparency deposit sounds powerful. Lucas: It is. And within about six weeks, she told me the one-on-ones went from tense to productive. The battery wasn't at a hundred percent, but it was above seventy, which was enough to have real conversations. Luna: I love that she had a specific threshold. Seventy percent is the functional trust level. Lucas: Exactly. And that's the power of the model — it gives you a diagnostic. If the battery is below thirty percent, you're in crisis mode. Between thirty and sixty, you need active repair. Above sixty, you can focus on normal collaboration. Luna: So let's talk about a real-world scenario. A friend of mine, Maya, works at a big consulting firm. She told me she started tracking her trust battery with each of her engagement managers. She'd literally open a spreadsheet after every weekly call and update a number. Lucas: That's very consultant of her. Did it help? Luna: Yes, because she caught a problem early. She had one manager where the battery dropped from eighty to fifty over three weeks. She looked at the deposits — he was giving her ambiguous feedback, and she wasn't asking clarifying questions. She was making assumptions about his expectations. Once she started over-communicating and confirming priorities in writing, the battery climbed back to seventy in a couple of weeks. Lucas: That's exactly the use case. It's early detection. Most people wait until the relationship is already broken before they try to fix it. But if you're tracking the battery, you see the dip and you can make a small deposit before it becomes a big withdrawal. Luna: The interesting thing is that it's not just about the other person — it's about your own behavior. The battery is a mirror. If it's low, you have to ask: what am I doing or not doing? Lucas: Totally. And sometimes the battery is low because of things outside your control — organizational change, a mismatch in working styles. But even then, naming it helps you decide whether to invest more or to protect your energy. Luna: Which brings us to the flip side — when do you stop making deposits? When do you walk away from a relationship that's chronically low battery? Lucas: That's a great question. I think there's a threshold. If the battery stays below thirty percent for more than a couple of months, despite your intentional deposits, you might be in a fundamentally misaligned relationship. And sometimes the best career move is to stop trying to recharge that battery and redirect your energy to relationships where deposits actually stick. Luna: That's hard advice to follow, especially if the person is your manager. But it's honest. Lucas: Yeah. And it's worth noting that the trust battery model applies to all work relationships — peers, direct reports, clients, even your network outside your company. I've used it with mentors. If I notice I'm avoiding a mentor because the battery feels low, I try to figure out why. Often it's because I haven't been transparent about where I'm actually struggling. Luna: So the deposit you need to make is vulnerability. That's a tough one for a lot of people. Lucas: It is. But it's also one of the highest-return deposits. When you share a real challenge, most people lean in. They want to help. And the battery goes up. Luna: You know, this whole conversation reminds me of something I've been thinking about — we spend so much time on skills and resumes, but the quality of our work relationships might be the single biggest predictor of career satisfaction. And maybe even advancement. Lucas: I think you're right. And if this show has helped you think more clearly about your own relationships or career decisions, that's exactly why we do it. We keep Career Coaching with Fexingo free and ad-free because we believe this kind of practical advice should be accessible. Luna: And if you find value in conversations like this one, listener support is what keeps it going. No pressure, but if you'd like to chip in, you can find us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Lucas: Exactly. Every little bit helps us keep the episodes coming. Now, back to the trust battery — I want to talk about one more dimension: how to rebuild trust after a major breach. Luna: Let's hear it. Because that's where the model really gets tested. Lucas: So imagine you missed a critical deadline. Your boss is upset, the team had to scramble. Your trust battery just took a huge hit. The instinct is to apologize profusely and then over-deliver on the next task. But that's not enough. Luna: Because the issue isn't just competence — it's reliability. The deposit you need to make is a systemic fix, not just a one-time save. Lucas: Exactly. You have to show that you understand why it happened and that you've put a process in place to prevent it from recurring. That's the repair deposit. Sarah, the product manager, had a situation where she forgot to loop in legal on a feature launch — caused a two-week delay. Instead of just saying 'I'll do better,' she created a launch checklist that included a legal sign-off step, and she shared it with the whole team. That rebuilt trust faster than any apology could. Luna: So the deposit is a system change, not a promise. That's a really actionable takeaway. Lucas: Right. And the trust battery model gives you a way to measure whether the repair is working. If you check in two weeks later and the battery is still low, you know you need a different approach. Luna: I think the biggest insight from all this is that trust isn't a binary thing — it's a dynamic, rechargeable resource. And you can manage it intentionally. Lucas: That's the core message. Treat your work relationships like a battery you can charge, and you'll spend less energy in draining conversations and more energy doing meaningful work. Luna: So this week, maybe we all try a little experiment — pick one relationship, guess its battery level, and make one small deposit. See what happens. Lucas: I love that. And if you do, let us know. We'd love to hear how it goes.