Being a lead/manager requires people skills that some people don't have. Let's be frank: a lot of us are neurodivergent and on the spectrum and that often does not make for good people managers. It's not a failure of career progression to shy away from management.
Well, then publish stuff, do open-source, build libraries people use, or otherwise advance the state of the art. There are lots of ways to impact other people without being a manager.
You also don't have to be a genius to do any of this stuff. There are outsized rewards to just showing up and always being nice and helpful (eg on open-source).