One of the main influencing parameters in success of any team or community (which could be a corporation, an organization or even a country) is the quality of its leadership. And it is difficult to find people who will disagree with the statement that strong leaders are hard to find.
There is a long list of books and articles on the characteristics of strong leaders (some of which we will be including in our external links here). But what is generally agreed upon is that a significant portion of desired characteristics for strong leaders is built into their personality.
Various teams and communities have developed mechanisms and/or processes to choose their leaders. While many of these mechanisms or processes may have difficulties in identifying strong leaders, they put in place checks and controls to ensure the selected leaders operate within the pre-agreed boundaries.
Hence the remaining challenge is an effective method to choose and/or develop strong leaders for various teams or communities!