Independent business blogs are blogs that aren’t supported by an organization like a magazine, newspaper, company, or business school. Those people provide lots of great content, but they don’t need any additional exposure. In this post, every week, I bring you posts of quality from excellent bloggers that don’t get as much publicity.

This week, I’m pointing you to posts by Kevin Eikenberry, Art Petty, Lolly Daskal, Mary Jo Asmus, and Ken Downer.

From Kevin Eikenberry: Having Great One-on-Ones with Employees

“As a leader, you need to stay connected to the members of your team – so you know what they are doing, how they are progressing, and have a chance to provide support for them and much more. You can call these meetings lots of things; I’ve heard them called weekly meetings, touch-in meetings, coaching meetings and much more. The current in-vogue term seems to be the ‘one-on-one’ meeting. Call it whatever you want, it is an important part of your role, and so it is worth our while to make these as effective as we can.”

From Art Petty: How Your Backstory Supports Your Career Success

“I attended a conference of uber-successful solo consultants and coaches this past week. It turns out, uber-successful people are some of the hardest-working individuals in the world on one core thing: themselves. They understand that they have to be at their best to serve their clients in an extraordinary fashion.”

From Lolly Daskal: 4 Proven Reasons Why Intuitive People Make Great Leaders

“I have seen leaders say that relying on your six sense- following your gut- your intuition- is being unreliable. But for years, I have seen how the intuitive leader, can be more of an explorer, and discover more than those who don’t utilize their intuition and I have witnessed that Intuitive people make great leaders, they have a competitive edge over other leaders, they are quicker, faster, smarter and more decisive.”

From Mary Jo Asmus: Reconnecting with happiness

“Changes in my personal situation and a dissatisfaction with what I’ve allowed to happen with my work forced me to take a look at my life. I decided to give something up so that I have space to pick up more happiness. It was a bold move, because there was a comfort in the work that didn’t fulfill me but paid well. But I let it take over my life, and I no longer had the valued freedom that I had enjoyed “

From Ken Downer: Don’t Fear the Elephants

“Nobody said he was a great mathematician. But he may be the greatest general you never heard of. His actions over 2,000 years ago are a great example of how you can influence your future by the way you react to what’s coming at you.”

That’s it for this week’s selections from independent business blogs. If you liked this piece you may enjoy my regular post on “Leadership Reading to Start Your Week” points you to choice articles from the business schools, the business press and major consulting firms about strategy, innovation, women and the workplace, and work now and in the future. Highlights from the last issue include why so many leaders are charismatic narcissists, how retailers are thriving despite the supposed death of their industry, taking the ego out of ideas, Silicon Valley’s sexism problem, and an inside look at Amazon’s futuristic distribution system.

How I Select Posts for this Midweek Review

The five posts I select to share in my Midweek Review of the Independent Business Blogs are picked from a regular review of about sixty blogs I check daily and an additional twenty-five or so that I check occasionally. Here’s how I select the posts you see in this review.

They must be published within the previous week.

They must support the purpose of the blog: to help leaders at all levels do a better job and lead a better life.

They must be from an independent business blog.

As a general rule, I only select posts that stand on their own, no selections from a series.

Also as a general rule, I do not select posts that are either a book review or a book report.

I reserve the right to make exceptions to the above.

Here, on Three Star Leadership, I post things that will help a boss at any level do a better job and live a better life. At the The 360 Degree Feedback blog, I join other bloggers with posts on leadership development. And, at Wally Bock’s Writing Edge, I share tools and insights to help you write better.

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