I think the question comes down to 'which Christians?' There was likely a very mundane reason for why Paul needed to have had a vision of Christ in order to claim a position of authority to anyone. And the hierarchy was present in 'orthodox' christianity very early. But other branches (eg Gnostics) don't seem to have followed that pattern - there's a good case to be made that the early church hierarchy was a direct response to the gnostic approach.
I've often wondered who is meant by 'leaders' here. If one takes a reading of this that it's something composed for Jewish Christians prior to 70 CE, then their leaders are the men in Jerusalem who claim to have authority from Christ himself. The phrase of vs. 17 is the same as in vs. 7. The leaders are those who gave the message to the believers. And if one accepts that Paul wrote this, those would be the very same men who sent messengers out to chase him for not doing what he's telling others to do here. If one, as many do now, view this as not being written by Paul then one gets the same point but a reinforcing of that direct apostolic authority which Paul later bought into with his vision. So I suppose really I'd personally wonder less about the phrasing of what's meant to be done and more about for whom it's done. The later interpretation placed upon this is obvious enough. But does that actually fit the context here? 1 Corinthians 11:16 (ignoring later addition possibility) suggests that people would cite other traditions of christianity when told to do something - even if it were an apostle doing the telling!