What kills me about Furiosa telling Max the code to start the rig is that just a few minutes previously that’s the ONLY thing that kept Max from leaving them in the dust to their fate in his panic to escape. Yet Furiosa makes a decision to give Max the code and give him the power to completely screw them over if he wanted to. But he doesn’t because Furiosa reads him correctly and in giving him that level of power back actually causes him to calm down since he knows someone just gave him a huge amount of responsibility in something he’s not even really sure what’s going on about, but this person is treating him like a human and acting like he’s part of the team and Max is so obviously taken off guard that he doesn’t even question it and is just like “yes ma’am” and starts helping her. Yes Furiosa is a bad ass, but her brilliance in this moment isn’t beating the crap out of Max or outwitting him or forcing him to do anything, it’s realizing he’s acting like a trapped animal because he thinks he IS and she gives him an option to act like a human, which he does without hesitation. She doesn’t hold it against him that he just held them at gunpoint and Max in return just immediately throws his weight in with the group. 

Furiosa ultimately accomplishes her goal partially because she makes a decision to treat a person who had been treated like a commodity (just like the wives) up to that point as a rational, functioning human.