I work as a marketing specialist at a small company, and I'm wondering if I'm wrong for not wanting to take charge and tell my team what to do. I'm not the leader, and I don't want to lead because I'm not paid enough for this shit. Our boss is always asking us for 'feedback'. My team leader is a marketing executive, but it seems like she doesn't always know what she's doing. She became the leader because the previous leader and another team member left. She is older than me and respectfully, I don't want to overstep my role and tell her what she should be doing. At the end of every work day, I ask myself these question “how is someone like her not fired? how can someone speak so much without actually saying anything?” Some of my colleagues have also observed her asking basic questions related to the job that even an intern would know. Everyone in the office knows that our boss favor her, and no, they are not sleeping with each other. Every idea she asks for, he approves without question. Sometimes, it feels like the blind leading the blind. However, when we bring our ideas to the table, he often challenges us and doesn't seem to like what we propose.
She often assigns herself easy tasks like designing visuals and posting on social media, while the rest of us handle more complex work on the website, presentations, and creative content. I don't mind challenges, but it's tough when I have to ask her questions (website related), and she can't answer most of them. She's been with the company for almost two years, so I expect her to know the basics of marketing, such as scheduling posts and at least some HTML for websites. She's the least creative person on our small team. She often asks us for ideas but rarely contributes her own. When she presents our ideas to the boss, she makes it sound like she played a big part in them when she really just agrees with our ideas.
Similarly, at the end of every meeting, she would say how insightful the meeting was and recap everything that was said in the meeting to make herself look useful to the boss. I replay this video whenever she make unnecessary comments or feedback. Sometimes, she's not contributing much to projects and just tagging along by doing one or two things for the projects – is this social loafing? Not to mention, every social media calendar meeting are done a few days before the new month. We end up sitting there for 1-2 hours trying to come up with ideas. It feels like a waste of time to think during the meeting instead of bringing ideas to discuss. I don't consider her a work friend because we don't have anything in common. She tries to make small talk like asking “what did I have for lunch every single day? What I did over the weekend on every Monday?” She is overly friendly in a way where I find it fake. It feels like she'll turn into one of those older ladies who gossip all day when she gets older. I only see her as a coworker, so I'm mostly introverted around her.