Pandemic suffered from the orchestrator effect for us, where the best player just ended up telling everyone what to do.
Lots of co-op games struggle with this; some address it by simply adding so many details and complications that no one individual could possible track and orchestrate everything (the one that comes to mind being "Spirit Island"). Some games instead use a strict limit on communication ("Hanabi", "Regicide"), though that may defeat the social element for some.
Yeah what worked for us was limiting the kind of requests you could make - no “show me all
Your cards” type and more “we need to defend X who wants to do that” type.
It takes a lot of people to shine, but Captain Sonar has great team co-op mechanics AND an extremely clever competitive mechanic in the radio operator.