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 Michael Bungay Stanier, Karin Hurt, Anne Perschel, Terry “Starbucker” St. Marie, and Steve Roesler.

From Michael Bungay Stanier: A Four-Point Health Check for your Team

“In organizations, things are more ambiguous. Often you’re not entirely clear about your role, expectations placed on you, your expectations of others, the rules, the standards, the context, the point, and what success looks like. Other than that, it’s crystal. People talk about it being a VUCA world: Volatile, Unpredictable, Complex and Ambiguous. Let me offer up an alternative VUCA to check the health of your team and make things a little less messy. Each section has two questions for you to consider: one externally focused about the people you serve; one internally focused about the people with whom you’re working.”

From Karin Hurt: 5 Ways Listening Like an Anthropologist Will Make You a Better Leader

“When I was in grad school, there were clearly two camps (and they didn’t respect each other all that much): The scientests out to prove their hypotheses through experimentation, control groups, and statistical analysis, and the qualitative researchers who showed up, listened, and let the theories emerge.”

From Anne Perschel: How to Manage Your Ego – Leaders Guide

“Ego has come to mean overly concerned with your Self. Making your SELF too BIG. The problem is magnified for you as a leader because you have an important role. A sense of importance can feed your ego and cause it to grow. You’re used to being an important voice in the room. Making BIG decisions. People listen to you. Sometimes they show appreciation. They may even applaud. All this can feed your ego and make it grow bigger.”

From Terry “Starbucker” St. Marie: The Critical First Step For Great Leadership: The Journey From “I” to “We”

“There comes a time in a more human leadership journey where something radically changes. The focus of our effort makes a major progression forward that, once accomplished, propels us to greatness.”

From Steve Roesler: How About “Design” vs. “Work”?

“Right now, you are either thinking about or designing an idea, product, service, or process. Yet most of us don’t view ourselves as designers. It sounds like a specific, creative field in which we don’t have formal education. But we do.”

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 the problem of too much talent, improving healthcare while curbing cost, transforming organizations for sustained innovation, why when women get stuck, corporate America gets stuck, and how big data can take the pain out of the annual performance review.

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.

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