This piece of research seeks to provide a rich insight into successful primary school principals in rural areas in Cyprus. The schools were located within the rural area of Nicosia, the capital city of Cyprus. The rationale for selecting rural schools as our sample rests on the acknowledgment that rural area schools have a low socioeconomic status, poor facilities and infrastructure as well as a low student achievement when compared to urban schools. Therefore, gaining a deeper insight into the knowledge, skills and dispositions of successful schools principals in rural areas was deemed an interesting and necessary research attempt. The specific schools which were included in this project were identified by their inspectors as successful in terms of their school leadership. More specifically, the focus has been to identify their skills, qualities, practices and values and to make sense of their day-to-day life in order to compliment the construction of development programs for their in-service training. In this presentation, the educational context of Cyprus will first be presented followed by a discussion about successful school principalship practices identified through this piece of research. The findings of a multiple-perspective research presenting the case studies of five primary public school principals in rural areas of Cyprus will then be described, while the implications emanating from the case studies will be discussed.