In general, I agree 100% with your comment, in my career so far I would say I met only 1 leader, the rest is good talkers or people who know how to keep their positions.
Unfortunately I have come to the realization that it's just how it is, and you move on. Life is not just work, and some people know better how to climb the ladder than others, some are just luckier. Etc. Etc. Therefore I learnt to be happy with what I have, knowing that it could be better or worse. When it's too bad, it's probably time to move on.
You list attributes of bad managers: no particular skill in the area, likes to have authority, and likes making more money. We can mitigate the likelihood of attracting those managers by providing the opposite.
1. Let teams self-organize, where team members will value those who are both competent and effective cooperators.
2. Don't pay them more, it's just a role within the team, like being responsible for some feature. Have pay scales that value your experienced members, just don't pay your lead more than their more senior reports.
3. But who'll do the paperwork and other secretarial work that managers are normally responsible for in addition to their decision making/leadership duties? Hire a team secretary: someone who does not have hiring and firing power over the rest of the team.
Perfmafrost is unhealthy and unsustainable for an org, so in permathaw where everything is perpetually fluid.
Leadership isn't power and control. Leadership is the ability to drive change with others. Leadership is an act, not a position. Flat organizations tend not to be leadersless teams and rather leaderless organisations.
There are many good leaders, but the tend to be in the middle not the top. Based upon research evidence.
So, not actually leaderless teams, but a self-organizing structure from which emerged a role that is easily mapped to leadership, though not called that by name?
That we incorrectly define leadership, and attach a lot of ideas to it that have nothing to do with leadership itself, should be obvious to anybody who has worked inside a badly run organization. And it's a trivial observation that doesn't get us any closer to forming better teams.
I used to think I wanted to work in a completely flat organization, with nobody who thought they could boss me around. Having done that, I now realize what I actually want is someone who is good at being the boss, and isn't a prick about it. I want somebody to have a synoptic view of what's going on, keep all the parts running smoothly, and act as a shield against all the various distractions coming from outside the team or the company, so I can do my job well. Such people are multipliers for effectiveness and happiness on teams.
What you usually get is someone who has no particular skill in these areas, but likes to have authority, and likes making more money.
I sometimes wonder if the problem isn't that there are only a few actually good leaders in the world, but we need to act like there are 10x or 100x more than that in order for our economy to run. Every once in a while you meet a great one, but the majority of "leaders", from the C level to the PM level, should really be doing something else instead.
How do you solve that problem?