To be fair, the best team leads I have had were all far from the strongest developers on the team.
The best team leads job isn't to dev, it's to represent the teams interests to the larger organization, and I have known some people who have really gone to bat for us, while at the same time barely being able to code genuinely getting angry at CI for pointing out obvious problems with their code.
Dude I don’t know. Representing the team means understanding and making sure the architectural approach and interfaces/contracts with other teams are solid and will stand the test of time. This is certainly different from leetcode skills, but I’ve never seen a truly bad coder have any success at it.
If by team lead you mean manager, sure. If by team lead you mean tech lead, absolutely not. They should be one of the strongest developers on your team.
The best team leads job isn't to dev, it's to represent the teams interests to the larger organization, and I have known some people who have really gone to bat for us, while at the same time barely being able to code genuinely getting angry at CI for pointing out obvious problems with their code.