What most people (non-musicians) don't realize is that, when you go somewhere to see a band, what you're seeing is the cream. The playing and the performance are the easy part - it's the logistics that are all the work and the hardest part of that is getting the (3,4,5,6 etc) personalities to gel and pull in the same direction long enough to actually make something happen. The more democratic and team-like it is -the difficulty goes up exponentially. Unfortunately, though it's the ideal situation to work in, that's a fact. It easily becomes like herding cats.
When there's a recognized leader there's a centralized command/direction. It's the situation I'm in now. The trade-off is this: I have no input into the direction of the band and the presentation (repertoire). On the other hand, I'm here going on 17 years, we average 100 gigs a year doing covers, nobody tells me how/what to play and it doesn't require any energy from me to deal with bookings etc.
Sometimes I hate it because of my limited input, but I can't argue with results, and when I think of what I might have to go through to get something else off the ground it makes me cringe.
I'm too old for that sh*t.
