Does anyone have experience working with a nice boss who doesn’t have any leadership/ managerial qualities?

I’ve been working under my current manager for about 3 years now. He’s a great guy, super kind and friendly. However, he doesn’t seem to possess any managerial qualities at all. Like he doesn’t protect his staff from other sections, and basically leaves us to either fend for ourselves when other people wants to load us with extra work, or like when our director asks him any hard questions, he would just freeze and not say anything. There are just so many incidents now that just proves to me that he doesn’t have any leadership qualities, and I’m not even the only one who feels it. My colleague who works under my team shares the same levels of frustrations as me.

The thing is, our entire section is under risk / hot water basically, because of him. Earlier today when we had a meeting, our director questioned him about certain things about his presentation and proposals and he just kept quiet the whole time. In the end the director got so frustrated that she basically grilled him in front of me and another senior manager, and she started asking me for answers to her questions instead. It made me so frustrated because firstly, I got roped into this meeting at the last minute and didn’t have much info about what’s going on, and secondly, the questions our director asked could’ve been easily answered as my manager had already discussed the plan with us and other section prior to the meeting. So I don’t know why he just kept quiet the whole time.

The sad thing is, because my manager is such a nice person, I can’t even get angry with him. It genuinely feels like he doesn’t want to be in a managerial position too, but was promoted simply because our previous manager left and we needed someone else to lead the team. I’ve tried talking to him many times now about how I feel about things, but he always brushes me off and just smiles at me. It just makes me feel even more unheard and frustrated.

I don’t know if anyone has any experience working under a manager like this. But if you guys do, I would genuinely appreciate any advice because working under him is making me want to lose my mind at this point.