Although fostering trust has been given more emphasis in recent research on school leadership, less research sheds light on the tensions between power and trust and how collective interactions related to leadership evolve in school settings. This paper addresses leadership as relational work, traced in interactions between a principal and a group of teachers operating within the context of a school-improvement project in a Norwegian upper secondary school. The analysis explores how the participants position themselves and others through negotiations in meetings while the participants discuss the conditions of the project. The findings show how leadership positions and power relations are constituted, challenged and changed in interaction amongst the participants over time. Thus, this study provides insight into leadership as an interactive process and the dynamics of power and trust in developing leadership actions. The main argument is that risks and opportunities are significant parts of leadership work, and that relational work affects the ever-changing status of the division of authority.
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