We suck at this

Of course who am I to judge. Just about nobody, I'm someone and someone is better than noone, usually but not always. Somebody though is important. I may say that somebody like me, may be in a situation where it would be better for everyone if I was nobody. Like being in a disciplinarian teacher's classroom, who despite imposing strickt discipline on his students takes about 20 minutes on average to answer a question. The bell rings and he says any questions? Everyone is to remain to hear the response to a question and I have a question. From the class perspective who we safely assume would rather be outside enjoying their break, in this case me being nobody is better than me being somebody, or as the case may be anybody.
Do I raise my hand or not?
If I have a genuine gap in understanding, and getting an answer to my question is important, I should be able to obtain that gap and make myself more complete. Here is where I must confess to have absolutely no understanding of utilitarianism. The greatest good for the greatest number and all that.
I would simply suggest that the individual in this case can be protected from the tyranny of the majority in a simpler matter and that is for the teacher not to design the situation so the masses suffer to satisfy an individual. It would be simple for the teacher to say something to the effect of 'if you have any questions, please come and see me yourself. The rest of you may go.' And that is what we call win-win.
Anyway I may as well confess that blogging is not good communication, and my writing here is very prosey, or possibly more correctly, crap. On the few occassions I've actually read my blog, I have been appalled by my own writing. But for me, it is better to write something over nothing, it is very effective for me and know that I would write this blog if nobody ever read it and in those terms it is a success.
Ironically I have been listening at length to podcasts from manager-tools who focus specifically on how to be effective. Recently I was going over their performance review podcasts and they made a point which was interesting to me. It was about the nature of the scale used to determine performance achievement.
You have two types of scales as far as I know, relative and absolute. Relative is probably the one most of my friends and everyone really would know from school and University. Your Enter Score and Exam results are Normally distributed over all the results of the sitting students. That is my result placed me in a certain percentile of student performance, or how well I performed on my Year 12 exams was in terms of how poorly or how well everybody else sitting Year 12 exams was.
Absolute might be something of a scale like in the Game Point Blank, the game where you had to shoot stuff. Say their were a hundred bottles your performance would be in terms of an absolute scale. You wouldn't get a percentile rank based on the performance of other shooters, you would shoot 100 bottles or less.
From memory point blank may have used a relative scale or some other grading system now that I think about it.
Anyway how do I want to be measured? I think I want to be measured in absolute terms. I am not content to be measured just in terms of my relative distance from the worst manager/leader/professional in the world. I find it unethical.
I find it unethical because I could sound good when in fact I am pretty bad.
For example, most businesses are not good. Any industry may have hundreds or even thousands of firms competing in its market. But most consumers can only remember a very small group of select brands, or firms out of them. And then statistically speaking given any particular market the brand on top makes the majority of the total money to be had, and then down the ladder in diminishing returns.
A lot of leaders, managers and whatnot I don't think it is a stretch to conclude, probably are in over their heads, doing tremendous damage and whatnot.
I'm not going to single anybody out, but what that means for a relative scale is if average management (that is the average competency of all managers) is actually below competency, and I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the top managers or top 5% are the only ones to achieve competency. What's that mean for a relative scale. It could mean that even if your in the top 30% you might still be incompetent or ill suited to your role.
Or you could take an absolute scale, which would still in my view be pretty relative but you might go about it by selecting the best leader/manager of all time and then mark everyone down from their.
Who the greatest leader of all time is open to debate, you have Gandhi and Abe Lincoln up their of course, someone like Drucker might put forward Sloan Jr. or the dude from Bell Telephone Company. Jim Collins talks about Level 5 leadership and in his way probably has the closest thing to an absolute scale as you get.
Something tells me though that there is something beyond Level 5. Hence the weakness of absolute scales. Level 5 more or less is that 5% of the relative scale.
That is its incredibly rare for one to actually reach it.
One thing that slapped me in the face that wasn't a dick recently was from my readings, it started with some critical works of Japanese culture like Straightjacket Society, Dogs and Demons and Shutting Out the Sun. In there I found quotes by Abe Lincoln in a lot of places so I started reading up on Abe Lincoln and then Mark Twain. I've also reread 1984 and Catch-22, I have to say Catch-22 in my mind is the book in that it is one of the few books I've ever read possibly the only one where almost every line, every paragraph is pure gold.
What I found was almost universal contempt for the powers that be, and then there's Noam Chomsky, Noam Chomsky comes from one end of the spectrum on capatilism when he says things like:

Personally I'm in favor of democracy, which means that the central institutions in the society have to be under popular control. Now, under capitalism we can't have democracy by definition. Capitalism is a system in which the central institutions of society are in principle under autocratic control. Thus, a corporation or an industry is, if we were to think of it in political terms, fascist; that is, it has tight control at the top and strict obedience has to be established at every level -- there's a little bargaining, a little give and take, but the line of authority is perfectly straightforward. Just as I'm opposed to political fascism, I'm opposed to economic fascism. I think that until major institutions of society are under the popular control of participants and communities, it's pointless to talk about democracy."

And it rung back to Ricardo Semler's observation that whilst democracy is lauded as the best system of government available, you almost never find it in business. He set out to create a natural and democratic workplace. Did he succeed?
You judge why don't you. I get a feeling though, tickling my balls is that what all this indicates is that influence and power are not the same thing. I know power is defined as 'the ability to act or do' and wiktionary describes influence as one and the same just about -

The power to affect, control or manipulate something or someone; the ability to change the development of fluctuating things such as conduct, thoughts or decisions; the status of being able to dictate the actions or behaviors of an object or person; moral or political power over a person or group; ascendancy.

But I suspect one can be a leader without being powerful at all, or powerful in much more different dimensions than traditionally thought. Gandi stands out as an example. His tactic specifically was as it appears to me almost a judo principle of using the opponents strength against them, that was British power was based on a military monopoly, their identity was caught up in their own belief of moral superiority. Gandhi undermined their identity and their power over India effectively collapsed.
But such contradictions are still rife, Noam Chomsky's most striking passage thus far in hedgemony or survival was his allusion to the dualism of the US foreign policy. That the war in Iraq was about regime change and 'bringing democracy to the world' whilst simultaneously being happy to criticise the Turkish government at the outbreak of the war by listening to the will of the people (demos in greek) which overwhelmingly (95%) did not want Turkey to be used as a launching base by US forces. Democracy is bad in Turkey, and the Turkish government is weak because it listens to the will of the people, but good for Iraq?
That's the next step, in my series of steps, in a nutshell. My recognition that truly great leaders, actually empower people, and are powerful because of it. Ricardo Semler allows the employees of Semco far more freedom to determine their own careers, working conditions, compensation and so forth and he also removed himself from official power. He created a lasting democracy that is also a highly successful business, with highly satisfied participants.
Then you have Abe Lincoln, who actually stopped himself from interfering in the war, recognising Ulysses S Grant's right to actually do the job he was appointed to do. He shared power with the Slaves, a first step to be sure but he simply did not have to. This did though fit in with his vision of the US becoming a truly great nation. He unified it, surrendering half the country to win it back, and complete power over a race of people and eventually his own life.
I doubt manager-tools would endorse the view, but they do certainly regard the foundation of management to be an ethical profession. As such I think development as a leader has to be fundamentally ethical. Ethics is hard, but I am trying to come up with a meaningful absolute scale by which to aspire my development. And I have almost nothing to offer.
Suffice to say I recognise that I started off as a Grade E leader, using my own scale. This grade was obtained due in large part to my genes and priveledge of birth, I am intelligent, and born one of the wealthiest people in the world. I had access to a good education which trained me in critical thinking, adversarial debate, power and influence. This made me good at winning. It is only with much passage of time that I have since graduated to a D level leader where I currently reside.
This is based on my knowledge of how easilly ineffective I was relying on being smart, critical, assertive and political savvy is. Infact success resting on those laurels is in my view really a failure. I think level D is becoming conscious of interests other than your own, and attempting to satisfy as many individual interests as one can in an ethical manner. It is to utilise ones capacity not for personal gain, but lasting gain for multiple benificieries.
And that's as far as I have, if I knew what C (a pass) was I'd go there, in the meantime i'll keep digging.
Maybe its something like this guy though. Lions are pretty cool.