....then again, no matter how many assistants (including sprites or directing coaches) you have the and no matter how many hits they get the most dice that can be added to the test is equal to the leader’s rating in the applicable skill, or the highest attribute rating if the test involves two attributes (SR5 p. 49).
This is an interesting catch that I never realized before.
If you're trying to use Leadership to Direct someone (SR5 pg 142) it's specifically called out as a teamwork test. Ergo if you're trying to use Leadership to help the Decker but you have no Hacking skill yourself, you can give him a maximum of 0 extra dice. Makes much more sense.
Actually, no. What we have here is a mix-up of terminology. In a Teamwork test, they use the terms "leader" and "assistant" when they refer to the person performing the test and the person (or people) that are helping respectively.
When you perform with the Leadership skill they actually don't use the term leader, and actually refer to the participants as "superior" and "subordinates" instead.
So technically this situation is laid out like this:
The
superior uses the Leadership skill to act as an
assistant to their
subordinate who is the
leader of the Teamwork test. The limit on the maximum number of bonus dice that can be relayed is the
leader's skill rating, who in this case is the person being directed, not the person using Leadership.
EDIT: It is worth noting that the maximum number of dice is from everyone assisting on that Teamwork. Since Direct acts as Leadership, it is essentially just a way for a Face to assist Teamwork using a different skill, it doesn't actually add a whole new ability.