130 players do not yet trust that teachers are able to and will practice collaborative innovation without vertical steering. Our findings confirm that trust can affect how school principals find a balance between steering and providing professional space. In terms of how school principals find this balance, we described three leadership patterns. We found only two studies in other contexts that described leadership patterns of formal leaders. To the best of our knowledge, Torfing (2016) is the only one who has identified leadership patterns in the specific context of collaborative innovation. His patterns were theoretically derived and based on civil society organizations rather than schools. He presented three patterns: Conveners who spur interaction, Facilitators who promote collaboration, and Catalysts who prompt actors to think out of the box. While we both use the label Facilitator, our descriptions differ. Whereas Torfing described Facilitators as leaders who constructively manage differences between actors and are involved in processes of mutual learning, Facilitators in our studies were not involved in the collaborative innovation processes and only facilitated the innovation from the side – for instance, in providing time to collaborate. Interestingly, in our interpretation, all three of Torfing’s patterns would be part of our Team player pattern. Torfing’s patterns can thus be seen as a further specification of our Team Players. He addresses all patterns as being beneficial for collaborative innovation but does not explain whether leaders can enact all three patterns or only one. We see our other two patterns, Key players and Facilitators, as extending the range of Torfing’s patterns. We found that some principals relate too much to the collaborative innovation process and to teachers. These Key players do not yet trust their teachers to lead collaborative innovation. They do not dare to provide the teachers with professional space and choose to steer strongly. Other school principals relate too little to the collaborative innovation process and to teachers too less. These Facilitators minimize their involvement in collaborative innovation and with teachers. They mainly delegate their participation to coach-teachers. The fact that we found an extension of Torfing’s patterns might be a result of our research design. Instead of describing what is desirable to enhance collaborative innovation, we studied and described leadership in daily practice. The second study of leadership patterns was found in the context of collaborative teacher learning (Van Schaik et al., 2020). Van Schaik et al. identified that school principals enacted one of the following four leadership patterns: Integrators, Facilitators, Managers of teacher learning, or Managers of daily school practice. We and Van Schaik et al. both use the label Facilitator. They described Facilitators, and the patterns of Managers of learning and Managers of daily school practice as school principals who mainly direct initiatives by formally recognized leaders, and their participation and involvement with teachers is limited. Our Facilitator pattern confirms these three patterns, since we also
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