Trust Is a Shared PR

In powerlifting a personal record, a PR, gets celebrated by more than the lifter. The spotters, the coach, the training partners, everyone who corrected a form cue or simply showed up on a bad day owns a piece of it. Trust grows strongest in those moments. The lifter knows they could not have done it alone, and the people around them feel ownership in it. A shared PR is a shared story, and that story is what bonds people together and makes them eager to keep showing up for each other.

Product teams forge trust the same way. When a team wins together, landing a major customer, getting through a critical outage, shipping a complex feature, that shared achievement becomes the foundation for deeper collaboration. Trust grows not out of individual heroics but out of people watching each other invest, struggle, and succeed side by side. Shared PRs at work are more than milestones. They are the reminder that we are stronger as a team than we will ever be as individuals.

A personal example comes from working alongside my former engineering peer, Tony Meehan. We had a strict rule when communicating to the team: never use I statements. Our reasoning was simple. There was nothing we accomplished in that job that was done alone, so saying “I did this” or “I fixed that” was incorrect. Everything became “we” or “the team,” even in small wins. We also made it a habit to take blame when things went wrong and defer credit when things went right. This simple discipline created a culture of shared ownership, where trust was built through consistent signals that no one succeeded or failed alone.

That mindset is how we built an endpoint at Endgame that could go head to head with anyone in the market. We shared the mission, the credit, and the responsibility with everyone involved. We never pretended that the leaders single-handedly made it happen, because we are only as strong as our team. The real job of a leader is to clear the path for the team’s success, remove the obstacles, and make sure everyone can do their best work.

That was the heart of what Nate meant when he called us an elevator asset company back in the first chapter. Our mission was never to build products for our resumes. It was to lift others, users, teammates, and the organization, so they could rise higher. Every decision, every feature, every fix was grounded in the belief that we succeed only when we help others succeed first.

When I entered the world of competitive powerlifting, I was intimidated. I was surrounded by people stronger than me, lifting far more than me, and for much longer. I expected to be mocked or ignored because of my starting lifts. It was the total opposite. The whole community celebrated every lift, no matter the weight, because they were there for the love of growth. That experience settled it for me: real strength lifts others.

“True communities of strength do not measure value by the weight on the bar but by the willingness to show up, put in the work, and support each other along the way.”

The best teams cover each other’s weaknesses and amplify each other’s strengths. The best leaders know their own gaps and deliberately build teams that fill them, challenge them, and make everyone better. Abraham Lincoln famously surrounded himself with people who disagreed with him. He understood that real leadership does not fear dissent, it uses dissent to sharpen decisions and widen the view. I have made the same practice part of how I build teams. I have also been on the other side of it.

When I joined Elastic after the Endgame acquisition, I came from a classic endpoint enterprise model where everyone charged per endpoint deployed. That was the industry standard. Elastic leadership was adamant that endpoint security should fold into Elastic’s consumption pricing, eliminating per-endpoint pricing entirely. I disagreed, based on my years in the classic space. My bias was rooted in my experience, which is exactly the kind of bias this book has been warning about.

I listened. I aligned. The shift turned out to be a massively positive move. We saw instant growth in endpoints under management, and we had users tell us, “Wait, I just get the endpoint too? For what I’m already paying?” as part of their existing Elastic spend. The leaders I have learned the most from were the ones who insisted on being told they were wrong. That is the kind of decision I am proud of, the kind I was wrong about first.

Weak leaders hire yes-men and cling to their authority, afraid of being replaced or overshadowed. Greatness comes from wanting your team to be better than you and helping them grow past what you could ever do alone. That is real leadership: creating an environment where other people succeed, thrive, and carry the mission forward stronger than you could on your own.

I see the same thing every time I coach. I help lifters who can move more weight than I ever will, and I love it. There is no jealousy in their success, only pride, and their growth does not diminish me, it fulfills me. That is the joy of building strength in other people, watching them do things they once thought were impossible. Great leaders carry that mindset into every team they build, knowing their real legacy is not what they personally accomplish but what they enable others to do.

Yet a lot of organizations erode this trust without meaning to, by rewarding only the person who lifts the heaviest: the loudest voice in the meeting, the contributor who works unsustainable hours. The same mistake shows up in executive bonuses tied solely to short-term metrics and in exclusive club trips awarded to individual sales reps. They are meant to motivate, and what they build is a culture of isolated effort, where teammates compete for personal recognition instead of collaborating for shared success. It is a lifter chasing PRs without ever spotting anyone else, focused entirely on their own numbers while the team stagnates around them.

Building a culture of shared PRs means celebrating contributions at every level: the engineer who asked the critical question in a design review, the product manager who got the stakeholders aligned, the customer success team that surfaced the insight that changed the roadmap. When we recognize that each lift, each launch, and each success came from collective effort, the spotlight moves from individual ego to shared mission.

Trust grows fastest in tough moments. When mistakes happen or plans fall apart, how the team responds decides whether trust is built or broken. Blame creates distance, while honesty, accountability, and a commitment to move forward together deepen trust and keep the team resilient. Shared PRs are not only about winning, they are also about recovering and learning side by side. Leaders who highlight team wins, acknowledge the behind-the-scenes work, and remind everyone that no victory is a solo achievement build cultures where people feel seen and valued.

I do not believe in the myth of the single person shaping the world. The stories told about Musk or Jobs usually skip over the teams of brilliant designers, engineers, and product managers who imagined, built, and refined what those leaders presented. Apple’s iconic products were crafted by extraordinary groups whose work was brought to Jobs, not invented solely by him. Musk has made careers out of buying other people’s visions and marketing them as his own. Ego has no place in product management. Our role, as I said to Tony often at Endgame, is to take the blame when things go wrong and defer the credit when things go right. No single person defines a product or a company, and anyone who claims otherwise has a personal reckoning they need to face.

Real strength, real leadership, and real success come from recognizing that we only reach heights worth celebrating by lifting each other.