This study explores the link between principals' leadership practices and learning achievements from a distributed leadership perspective, using semi-structured interviews with TVET supervisors, middle leaders, and teachers. A detailed discussion on how school principals actually practised distributed leadership (DL) and how these practices affected learning achievement is reported. Moreover, a comparative analysis was made between schools with high and low learning achievers. We found that the main features of distributed leadership practices implemented by the principals were inspiration of a shared vision, enabling followers to lead, motivating followers, participative decision-making, capacity building, and authority sharing. Besides, the study discovered that schools with high learning achievement tended to have a better attainment of distributed leadership practices. This study contributes to understanding the nature of distributed leadership and its influence.