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 Chris Edmonds, Karin Hurt, Lolly Daskal, Steve Roesler, and Mary Jo Asmus.

From Chris Edmonds: Service Creates Significance

“Is your workplace dull and frustrating or productive and inspiring?”

From Karin Hurt: The Worst Reason Women Don’t Get Promoted

“The room was filled with successful, competent, middle-aged women. We’d just finished a powerful workshop where each of them had identified ways they could make a bigger impact in the their organizations, in the world and in the women leaders coming up behind them. Then over lunch, Laura turned to me and confessed, ‘Karin, I’m still having trouble with your confident humility model. I think most women have way too much humility and that actually gets in the way of their success.'”

From Lolly Daskal: How to Become the Leader That People Want to Follow

“Being in a leadership position doesn’t automatically make you an effective and popular leader—someone people want to follow. There are qualities you need to have and skills you must develop to become the kind of leader people want to emulate. Here the ten ways you can become a leader that people want to follow.”

From Steve Roesler: You Can Influence: Here’s How

“Everyone wants to have influence; not everyone wants to build the relationships that enable it. There’s a natural flow to being influential.”

From Mary Jo Asmus: 10 reasons to stop giving advice

“It took me a long time to learn that others don’t really want my advice. I’m now pretty good at not giving instruction, but every once in a while I slip up. I know that even when others ask me what they should do, I rarely have the answers that are best for them.”

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, womaen and the workplace, and work now and in the future. Highlights from the last issue include why agility pays, how Pfizer set the cost of its new drug at $9,850 a month, how to spot a game changing innovation, pursuing gender equality as a competitive advantage, and the best places to work in the U.S. this year.

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.