To answer increasingly complex leadership challenges, a leadership style that can accommodate changing times is needed. Exploring the characteristics of transformational and distributed leadership as an effort to raise school performance is the research goal to be achieved.. This type of research is library research. The research data sources used are books and journals that are relevant to the title and study. Data analysis techniques used include steps such as preparing text data for review, reading all data, coding data, describing data, presenting data, and interpreting data. This research gives the result that an important characteristic of transformational leadership is visionary, where the leader will lead his team to move forward in creating change. While the main characteristics of the distributed leadership model are distributing or sharing some of the tasks and the process of influencing others, as well as the practice of a leader's activities focusing on an interaction between members. Transformational leadership emphasizes emotional awareness and individual empowerment, while distributed leadership enables flexibility in terms of location and time, as well as digital collaboration. Both require more collaborative leadership skills and utilize technology to facilitate team communication and cooperation. They are evolving to meet the complexity and challenges of the digitally connected work environment. Keywords: characteristics, transformational leadership, distributed leadership, school performance