6The success of school improvement initiatives depends not only on policy but on the level of trust in the school community. Leading With Trust is designed for use by teams, but includes preliminary personal exercises for leaders to use before they engage with staff. Exercises throughout the book identify current levels of trust in the school community; these are followed by numerous strategies and activities for progressively building greater trust, including techniques for discussing the "undiscussables"issues people have not yet been able to bring to the table. The book portrays two corporate cultures that have achieved high levels of trust, Southwest Airlines and Saturn Automobiles.

Conceived as a manual or "field guide," Leading With Trust is filled with inspirational quotes, tables, graphs, activities, and resources, many of which will be available online.