Photos are worth a thousand words!

You shouldn't have to make a lateral branch into a central leader. Or do anything at all, this year and maybe the next. For now, it's best to just let the tree grow and build up a good root system.

A young tree will re-leader all by itself, in a year or two. It probably will send up more than one leader but then you can choose which one seems the more dominate and remove the other.

And it depends on the size of the tree now as to whether or not there even needs to be a leader.......like the vast majority of shade trees, sycamores have a decurrent - aka leaderless - growth habit. What you do want to encourage is a trunk/leader that will extend to a height of at least 2/3 of the mature height of the tree.

See this fact sheet for details on the structural training of shade trees.

i wouldnt prune for at least another year or two ... but alas.. no pic as noted ..

the cliche would be.. every leaf is a food making machine ... producing food for the root mass to get itself settled in.. to get the tree established ... pruning off hunks of them would be counter intuitive ... and in my world.. warped as it may be.. fert is not a substitute ....

best logic i ever came up with.. for why they snip leaders.. was uniformity in shipping ... who knows ...

ken

Wait until it drops its leaves... then take a photo and post it here. Until we can see the branching, we can't give you an accurate answer.