Permission to lead is like a delivery that never comes. Go pick it up yourself.

Waiting to be appointed keeps a lot of capable people sitting still for years. There is rarely a moment where somebody official decides you are allowed to organise the group, start the thing, or say what needs saying, and most of the people who do those things simply started. Nobody stopped them and nobody authorised them. Acting first is how the permission gets created in retrospect.

Pick the thing you have been waiting to be asked to do and do a small version of it this week. Nobody will tell you it was allowed.