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 on the source of great leadership, management pitfalls, feeling the pain and doing it anyway, the difference between compliments and gratitude, and some important career lessons.

From Susan Mazza: The Source of Great Leadership

“Ultimately, it is who you are being, not your words, that is the real source of great leadership – the kind of leadership that inspires others to be and do their very best.”

From Les Hayman: Management Pitfalls

“I have found that we can learn much more from our mistakes than we can generally learn from our successes, but there are some serious mistakes that some managers make as they climb the corporate ladder to senior management nirvana, and which are ones that should be avoided at all costs, or rectified immediately if already in place.”

From Mary Jo Asmus: Feeling the pain and doing it anyway

“A leader considers the risks of asking for feedback even as he suspects it might make him look weak. Another ponders the dangers of increasing their collaboration skills when the company culture he works in is very hierarchical. Many other leaders struggle with the pain of delegating and their concern with the personal vulnerability it creates.”

From Lolly Daskal: Stop The Compliments and Show Me Some Gratitude

“Many of us mistake compliments for gratitude. So what is the difference?”

From Karin Hurt: 9 Career Lessons I Wish I’d Learned Sooner

“Today I share my biggest career lessons- learned from years of angst and my fair share of stupidity. Looking forward to hearing your 10s.”

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 Highlights from the most recent issue include Why the Old Paradigms of Strategy Development Are Out of Date, Driving Digitization in Retail Banking, With ingenuity and a 3-D printer, group changes lives, Here’s why women CEOs are more likely to get sacked from their jobs, and Opening up to MOOCs: opportunities for L and D.

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 better and live a better life. At Results vs
Activities, I join other bloggers with posts on talent development.

If you’re a boss, you should check out my Working Supervisor’s Support Kit.