The principal's leadership is an important component in the school, because it sets various policies and rules that will guide the school. One of the determinants of the progress of an educational institution is the leadership of the school principal. Effective school principal leadership must be able to carry out the vision and policies of the government and those that have been determined together. However, in reality in the field, subordinates (teachers and administrative staff) do not easily accept and implement the government's vision and policies or school policies that have been mutually agreed upon. The proof is that there are still many schools that have not been able to implement the vision in the form of action, sometimes the decisions taken do not involve subordinates, communication between leaders and subordinates is not good so that recognizing each member/subordinate will be difficult, so that leadership will not bring influence or change to the community. the institution. Basically, all input, policies and new breakthroughs are more easily accepted if they are conveyed using an approach based on the local customs/wisdom of the East Sumba community. This is caused by the culture or local wisdom of the East Sumba people which is still very influential in all aspects of life. A leader must be able to carry out policies that continue to be determined by the government by paying attention to the local wisdom of the community which has been embedded and become a guideline for social life before there is a government policy. So that culture and local wisdom can be implemented simultaneously, when policies are unable to solve a problem, that's where the leader will take an approach based on the local wisdom of the community. Vice versa, when local wisdom cannot solve a problem, then government policy will be used to solve the problem. This research topic is divided into two, namely, leadership and local wisdom. The aim of this research is to analyze the relationship between leadership and local wisdom of East Sumba, describe the characteristics of leadership based on local wisdom of East Sumba, and analyze the effectiveness of the leadership of school principals based on local wisdom of East Sumba at SMA Negeri 1 Pandawai