I work in a fast growing engineering company of around 100 employees in a team of now 6 people. We used to report directly to the CEO. About a year ago, the CEO decided to change the structure and deploy a second level in the company's hierarchy: team leaders. The company keeps a flat/familiarly hierarchy.

In my team, the colleague who has been in the company for the longest time has been promoted to team leader. This was also the reason given by the CEO - skillset was apparently not part of the decision making and me and some of the colleagues I talked to think that other persons would have been more qualified for the position. Even worse: She is just bad at team leading.

She is a kind of 'It's only good when I do it myself' person. She deliberately holds back information to keep control and does not assign tasks to project leaders as other team leaders do in their teams (and as she apparently should by company policy, as I found out yesterday).

There has also been promoted a surrogate team leader (which we all think would have made the better team leader) whom she deliberately keeps away from tasks, decisions and information. Even when she calls in sick for a week, she withholds the information he would need to substitute her as team leader in the meantime. She rather calls from home while being sick to ask about tasks and deadlines, assign new tasks or just to make it clear to everyone that she is so needed and that nothing works without her.

I'm not a psychologist, but I see a lot of personal issues in her behaviour like a huge need to prove herself as a woman in a male-dominant industry, prove to the CEO that she is the right person for the position and control compulsions to overact self-esteem issues.

**My questions are:**

* Should I talk to her about how I think her personal behaviour is damaging the team's trust in her?
* Can I talk to the CEO that I think there are other persons that are better suited for the position?

In general, she is taking the smallest kind of well-intentioned feedback as an attack on her position and her person. I am afraid that addressing any of these issues will result in worse behaviour towards me.