I am a Team Lead and I have mixed feelings about it, some for reasons you give here. My manager handles the overhead of having reports, which is large at my co

I am a Team Lead and I have mixed feelings about it, some for reasons you give here. My manager handles the overhead of having reports, which is large at my company. But people only work toward my goals if my manager motivates them to, and most of his mental energy goes towards a separate fiefdom of his, not my team. And I have never had any control whatsoever over who is on my team - except in a couple serendipitous situations, where I made much better choices than the ones that were made for me. Overall I feel forced to work with entrenched incompetence and semi-competence, but at least I am rewarded fairly well for doing well in spite of this.