This study investigated the effects of path-goal theory(PGT)principal leadership styles on teacher job performance in private secondary schools.It was conducted in 106 urban private co-education secondary schools in Lahore,Pakistan.To achieve the purpose of study,school principals,middle managers,and teachers comprised a unit of analysis purposefully for this mixed-method study.Principal leadership is yet controversial to teachers’ job-oriented effects due to various organizational work settings.Therefore,school leaders,including principals,would be unable to identify problematic aspects of the effect of principal leadership on teacher job performance.Consequently,teachers’ efficiency and productivity could decrease due to low job performance.Low performance and productivity would lead to a high employee turnover rate,demotivation,and job dissatisfaction(Aziri,2011;Vangel,2011).Eventually,school aims would not be achieved and overall school performance,especially yield,would decline.PGT distinguishes between four leadership styles—directive,participative,supportive,and achievement-oriented,organizational settings are predominantly characterized by task characteristics,teacher characteristics,and teacher motivation.However,PGT is confusing due to the complexity of the theory itself,and it encompasses several heterogeneous aspects of leadership due to its broad scope and the interrelated set of assumptions about the leadership process.Additionally,the favorable role of supportive and achievement-oriented leadership to make the directive leadership positive is unclear yet.Therefore,the question arises which PGT leadership style is effective in various organizational work-settings mentioned above.According to the Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training Government of Pakistan(MOFEPT,2017),the private secondary schools are more than half compared to public secondary schools,and there is a significant expansion of private schools since 2000 in the country.Hence,school leaders,particularly principals,are facing challenges in the provision of excellent teaching services for quality education in Pakistan.Thus,there was a need to shed light on the effects of PGT principal leadership styles on various job performance subcategories in terms of the following key performance indicators(KPIs):(a)teaching planning,(b)classroom organization,(c)monitoring and evaluation,(d)classroom atmosphere and discipline,and(e)teacher leadership.These effects provide a comprehensive understanding and assistance to school leaders to deal with the problematic aspects of various leadership styles.Numerous prior studies have documented this subject.However,they reported on teacher job performance as a single unit.Therefore,a concerted effort was required to examine the effects of adopted principal leadership styles on each domain of teacher job performance mentioned above.This study revealed the viewpoint of private secondary school principals,middle managers,and teachers about often used principal leadership styles,the effects of PGT principal leadership styles on teacher job performance,and how PGT contingency factors mediate these effects.In the present study,PGT was chosen for three main reasons:(1)it enhances goals’ productivity of followers by removing obstructions,(2)it confronts contingency factors mentioned above,and(3)the theory is explicitly left open to the inclusion of other variables,i.e.,KPIs of teacher job performance.This research employed a sequential explanatory research design to study the joboriented effects of principal leadership in private secondary schools in Pakistan.A total of253 middle managers and 284 teachers took part in the quantitative phase using a modified path-goal theory questionnaire(PGTQ)and teacher job performance questionnaire(TJPQ).Subsequently,ten principals and teachers respectively took part in the qualitative phase through semi-structured interviews.In the present research,Pearson correlation,t-test,confirmatory factor analysis(CFA),and the structural equation modeling(SEM),including path-analysis analytic technique,were mainly involved using SPSS and Amos to conduct the analysis.The reliability and validity of instruments,including the self-constructed part of TJPQ,were ensured statistically.All interviews were recorded,transcribed,and confirmed the transcriptions with the interviewees,and finally,all transcriptions were thematically analyzed.Overall,findings substantiated that principals preferred to use a directive leadership style in private secondary schools.The correlation findings from the structural equation modeling revealed that the directive leadership style had a significant effect on teacher job performance,followed by the achievement-oriented and supportive leadership styles,and qualitative findings endorsed the effectiveness of directive leadership in studied schools.Besides,directive principals promoted teacher job performance in various organizational work-settings in terms of PGT contingency factors mentioned above.Likewise,the qualitative findings from the interviews endorsed that directive leadership is an appropriate leadership style for SOPs,clarification of challenging goals regarding the task structure and carrying out assignments,the formal authority system,and successful job completion.More to the point,the findings confirmed the favorable role of achievement-oriented and supportive leadership as a theoretical significance.Achievement-oriented leaders let their followers know their expectations.They regularly set clear goals with potential highperformance standards,they trust in the capabilities of their subordinates,and they encourage the continued performance improvement of their subordinates.Conversely,although participative leadership was identified as a significant predictor,it was not considered a promising predictor of teacher job performance,because principals need to manage their schools under the rules and regulations established by head offices.This research was conducted in a non-Western culture,where directive leadership is beneficial for encouraging teacher job performance.While considering the job-oriented effects of principal leadership,participative leadership should be constructively adopted as it was found to be problematic in the studied schools.Therefore,a piece of training programs for principals on the useful practice of participative leadership functions could be productive,and schools require mutual responsibility and teacher motivation in the long run.