The Leader is the person whom employees follow. This is not "the boss" (although this often can be the case), but rather it's the person whom individuals rally behind. It's the person who holds the compass for the individual, who gives that employee something to believe in.
Unfortunately, many people are leaderless. In the lack of such leadership, a large number of employees view their "leader" in an entirely different light: their paycheck. In larger client structures, that attitude is often tolerated. Those employees become The Acquiescers. The acquiescer will just go along with whatever someone wants because their heart is not in it. They are leaderless, because they don't really care who their leader is. Their job is their job, and not much more. They are the shy kid who often lights up when you invite them out to lunch. They are just happy to be included in the group. They don't care where you are going to eat. They don't really care about the project they are working on, either. They are just happy to have a project. It doesn't matter if they don't believe in it, they'll just do it. It's either all about the money, or about being included. You know them in your company.
But remember, your company needs them. Like worker bees, you get to point them in a direction and tell them "go," and then tell them "go" again, and again, and again. The problem is that you have to know where to point them and constantly monitor and correct them. They are a time-suck and do not produce great work, but they eventually get stuff done.
On the agency side, fewer people willingly work the crazy hours, cope with the insane work pressure, or put up with the abuse they get constantly without believing in someone they are following. Those who do survive the furnace of agency work are usually The Followers. The follower is actively engaged in the leader's direction, helps support their goals, helps reign in other employees, and moves the company forward. This is one of the reasons why agencies churn through new people who have this "idea" of what it's like to work in advertising: glamourous and fun. They quickly become disillusioned and drop out of the system. But the follower sticks with it. In this way, the agency system is vastly superior to that of the client. Agencies keep the top talent, and the detritus gets discarded. But it also means that there is a high turnover required to keep the ship moving. The disillusioned acquiescers need to constantly be replaced. Thank god for interns.
The client has an entirely different issue. On the client side, many of the systems are designed to support the employee, keep the employee, understand their concerns, help them grow. That's all nice and good, but when the employee views their leader as just the source of a paycheck, all the company is doing is keeping dead weight, and many companies over the years have been so stripped of actual talent that they are left with employees who are still there simply because they can't get a job at another company. On the client side, the follower is a more dangerous type, the "yes-man." The danger with "yes-man" followers is that they will often follow blindly.
The first three archetypes, Leader, Acquiescer, and Follower are easy to deal with. They are predictable, and clients love predictable. The client tends to tolerate the acquiescer, and promote the "yes-man" followers, while not fully understanding the interpersonal dynamics of their true leaders. What happens in that system is that the company becomes entrenched in "group-think" behavior. The reason for this is the evisceration of the other two archetypes.
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