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 Stephen Lynch, Todd Ordal, LaRae Quy, Linda Fisher Thornton, and Suzi McAlpine.

From Stephen Lynch: How to Manage Highly Productive Virtual Teams

“Research has shown that virtual teams can outperform local teams, provided they are set up and managed in the right way. You can’t just assemble a dispersed team of talented people and hope for the best. A few years ago, these types of working relationships would have seemed strange, but thanks to good broadband connections, web conferencing, and collaboration tools, this style of working feels very normal to me. In fact, I prefer it.”

From Todd Ordal: Problem Solving is Not Real Leadership

“Real problem-solving is a valuable skill, but it isn’t the road to becoming a successful leader.”

From LaRae Quy: This Is How Smart Risk-Takers Succeed

“The absence of fear, when confronted with the unknown, is not courage; it’s more like stupidity or impaired judgment. Fear is a healthy reaction to situations where we don’t know how things will shake out in the end.”

From Linda Fisher Thornton: Conquer These Leadership Temptations In The New Year

“We’re starting a new year, with fresh possibilities, and it is a good time to think about our leadership values. What do we believe? How do we treat others? What matters to us? Can people determine our values by watching how we treat people?”

From Suzi McAlpine: 7 questions to ask yourself before 2021 ends

“Maybe you don’t have time right now. I get it. Too much to do before you sign off for the year and close that laptop. But if you don’t have ten minutes now, save this blog post somewhere easy to access and over the Christmas break, before you meet 2022, take 10 minutes to sit down in a quiet place and jot down your answers. Why? Because reflection – that metaphorical pause to take stock every now and again – is really, really good for you.”

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.

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