During a discussion I was responded to me with:
There is NO such thing as “leaderless” organisation amongst humans - period.
and I don't know what to make of it. I don't have enough first-hand experience with anarchist organizations to refute it but I have read and watched enough anarchist media to doubt this claim.
(Edit: probably should have mentioned: This was told to me by another anarchist who I've seen in this com. So I don't think this was due to ignorance.)
My main inspiration for my own beliefs comes quite a lot from the youtuber andrewism. Because the way he describes anarchism speaks to me. It's hopeful and constructive focusing on the things we can build instead of the things we must defeat, something that very much resonates with a naive pacifist like me.
He has made a video on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYVWbj8naBM.
And he does a good job of listing all of the different ways of leadership, until ending with the idea that leadership could be used as a way to start enforcing authority, and that constant vigilance is needed to oppose it. He therefor argues to view leadership not as a position, but as a practice that is shared across everyone.
There is also this comment under the video that I think is relevant:
I think that calling it a "guide" instead of a "leader" would properly convey the idea. Why is a guide a guide? Because of their local (or niche) knowledge, e.g. somebody who guides you around a museum. There is no inherent authority caught in the word, as you are simply choosing to listen to them concerning a specific context.
There is also this text: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-all-cocoons-are-temporary
Which I remember really resonating with me but I can't remember most of the specifics so I guess I'll need to re-read it at some point.
You might want to look-into how first-responders handle leadership. Ideally, everyone who eventually shows-up to help handle the fallout of a crisis-situation is properly trained to co-ordinate things, but you can't know who actually will handle things until someone steps-up. As a result, the first trained-AT-ALL person on-scene gets the role, period, until they defer, delegate, or resign.
This leads to a lot of top-down and peer-pressure in related-fields to always be training. Leadership-training is often one of the cheapest, only-free, or even travel-room-and-board-included options available.
What they've found is that those who step-up lock-in on what needs to be done - all levels from the bottom-up have the idealized overall picture, checlists, exception scenarios hammered-into them, and the importance of keeping-track-of-and-share the details even when you don't have time to write them down or explain them to everyone.
Therefore, a lot of the related Leadership training revolves around how to document what you can, the importance of finding a replacement-for-you candidate who is paying attention and can understand what you would need to pass-on with minimal explanation. Thus, the person who you eventually defer to, who relieves you and takes charge is usually not the highest-authority or most-experienced person on hand.
The higher you get in these authority-chains, and/or the more experience you get, the more the job is literally stepping back and check-boxing all the peripheral tasks. Taking-up slack or identifying those capable of doing so and stearing them towards those roles while avoiding interfering or conflict-with the ... err ... "situational" leader that stepped-up first and hasn't bowed-out yet.
Mind-you, none of this has anything to do with the day-to-day of those involved. People have managed large-disaster-fallout situations for 24-hours-plus only for it to come-out later that all they had on their CV was CPR training and an un-related-job with no prior leadership experience - they may not have even realized that they were in-charge until asked-about it days later. People just kept asking them what to do, and when asked what to do by them, responded, "do you mind handling things a while longer?"; They signed whatever was presented to them and not full of errors, maybe not realizing x document wasn't just a witness statement.
I guess what I'm getting at is, yes, some people have natural leadership talent, and some people you can train in the role five-ways-from-Sunday and they won't be suitable or want to step-up, and yes, so much in life requires "that guy" to be in-charge of x location or x situation for whatever time-frame, but ...
... the inevitability of the need for a leader does not require the same person be in-charge of whatever for years at a time, months, weeks, or even days at a time. Every leadership role has a hand-book of-sorts, a list of known exceptions, exceptions you may not want the wrong-person handling, and essential, bare-minimum tasks...
Here, I think the First-Responder outlook has it right: everyone gets repeatedly trained for leadership and constantly scrutinized for suitability. There are EMT's, Fire-men, and of-course Police Officers who are not allowed to work alone(far from just trainees any-more, but not leaders ... Barney Fife?), and preventing them ending-up de-facto in-charge of something important, at least on-the-clock, is a big part of why.