ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how relational trust emerged in the Distributed Leadership (DL) Program, featuring a case from the field of a high school that implemented the DL Program. It discusses how trust emerged on the DL team in the school, and provides detailed practitioner accounts relating how leadership team members, teachers, and administrators responded to the restructuring resulting from the DL Program implementation. When instituting team-leadership structures and routines, creating a team space that facilitated the development of roles and norms, which sustained teacher leadership, was essential to the development of relational trust in schools. A final table disaggregates the various facets of relational trust, and lists the specific leadership behaviors found to nurture trust in schools. Relational trust is a particular conceptualization of trust as it arises out of interpersonal social exchanges accompanying distinct sets of role relationships in schools: principals with teachers; teachers with other teachers; teachers with students; and teachers with parents.
