However, there are aspects of ‘leader’ that are useful but better addressed in different language: initiative-taking, authenticity, responsibility, for example.
This always leads me to the vast store of New Testament concepts in which the initiative of the Holy Spirit works through individuals. Lists of gifts (charismata), ministries, spiritual gifts (pneumata) and bodily organs all point to a universality of autonomous/spirit-directed activity.
How that dynamic works within the individual to produce a unique product of God and the individual in his/her culture, how this activity combines in groups to produce a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts and how initiative-taking individuals in community resolve conflict and questions of self-delusion: these are subjects that emerge from this concept, rather than how to shoehorn in ‘leadership’.