Principal leadership behaviors affect the improvement of school outcomes significantly, not only by providing psychological and professional support for teachers but also by facilitating a positive learning environment at school. This has cultivated both policy and research interest in understanding how principals' leadership behaviors can leverage student outcomes both directly and indirectly through teachers. In this quest, three leadership models have become prominent due to their close relation to classroom instruction and learning: instructional, transformational, and distributed leadership. The current study aims to reveal the relationships between these leadership behaviors of principals and student outcomes as well as assess the mediating effect of teacher self-efficacy on this relationship. Utilizing meta-analytic structural equation modelling (MASEM) methodology, the study analyzes data from prior studies to offer a more comprehensive and holistic analysis of the complex relationships between the variables. The analysis of data from 90 studies showed that all three leadership behaviors affected student outcomes both directly and indirectly through teacher self-efficacy. They also had a moderate direct influence on teacher self-efficacy, while teacher self-efficacy had a moderate effect on student outcomes. These results reiterate the significance of principals' leadership for learning to facilitate student outcomes and suggest that the integrated practice of leadership in accordance with contextual requirements could leverage the effectiveness and improvement of schools.