Leader needs to maintain lead and command but must be humble enough to acknowledge that he isn't expert in all skills needed. If there are others with better specialist skills work of that nature should be delegated to them. The FEMA Incident-Command training courses make clear one rather successful approach to this problem.

There is the incident management aspect and the ongoing survival management issues. For example if there is a plane crash / ship-wreck in which one of the crew survives then the crew member with highest rank is naturally expected to become the leader. They should accept this responsibility gladly and immediately. They may not have the best medical training in the group. First act that they should take is a skills inventory of the group. The person with the best medical training should be put in charge of dealing with traumas. The person with the best outdoors training / experience should be put in charge of shelter, warmth, orienteering. In issues of resource contention between groups / individuals the leader should be judge / arbiter / leader. The leader should not meddle in issues that have been delegated and should not accept any questioning of his / her authority and leadership. By delegating to the greater skill in specialities the leader properly empowers those who may naturally become his opponents and instead makes them his allies. Also, in a true emergency, this delegation will keep such individuals engaged and too busy with their speciality to bother with trying to direct the group as a whole. The leaders role is more of a coordination role than a boss role.

Without such leadership tragic mistakes may happen. If there is a lot of trauma and everyone gets involved in dealing with trauma because it is impressive then you may stabilize more patients and then lose everyone because no-one was bothering to build a fire and erect a shelter. Allow the most medically skilled to apply triage and provide him with as many helpers as he can direct while reserving enough man-power and expertise to erect a tarp, dig a snow-cave, etc to move the wounded into as quickly as possible. The leader needs to be aware of all aspects of the scenario and needs of the group but not so involved in accomplishing anyone of these needs that they lose perspective.