A choir needs many leaders – leading quietly or loudly from inside the group or in front of it.
A choir needs one decider – one who can have the ultimate say on musical choices, among many other things.
If you’re that person, make sure you make the decisions without doing all the leading. Let your choir lead, and you decide. Choir directors who do all the leading and all of the deciding are passing up much of the potential of the group.
(Of course, chamber groups work without a conductor all the time – they take turns being the decider each day, as The Real Group does, or they divide up the repertoire, as Cantus does. There are lots of ways to do it without a single decider; what all of them have in common is that only one person is the decider at any given time.)