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 Jesse Lyn Stoner, Susan Mazza, Anne Perschel, Steve Keating, and Art Petty.

From Jesse Lyn Stoner: 6 Tips for First-Time Managers

“The jump from the role of individual contributor to a first-time manager is one of the most dramatic and most challenging leaps you can make. It requires a complete shift in how you see your role and in how you deliver results. But unfortunately, most new managers are ill-prepared.”

From Susan Mazza: The Power of Leading with an Open Mind

“Have you ever changed your mind about a situation or about a person? What about changing your mind about a belief – something you believed to not only be a truth, but THE truth?”

From Anne Perschel: Why We Need Aspiration Focused Leaders and How to Be One

“We are an achievement-driven culture and value achievement oriented leaders. Ensuring people achieve the organization’s goals is one of the leader’s ultimate responsibilities. Determining what those goals are and ensuring people are motivated to achieve them, calls for aspiration focused leaders.”

From Steve Keating: Excuses Steal Your Potential

“I can’t think of even a single benefit of excuse making. People who make excuses make very little of anything else. Excuses, as much as anything, limit a person’s opportunity to reach their full potential.”

From Art Petty: A Beginner’s Mind Helps Solve the New Manager Conundrum

“And while the tripping points are consistent across new manager experiences, including navigating challenging conversations, learning to delegate, and developing trust, experience suggests the seeds of success or failure for the new manager are sown even before the promotion. Promoting managers are well-served by helping their aspiring managers cultivate a beginner’s mindset through a series of discussions and live-fire experiences.”

That’s it for this week’s selections from independent business blogs. If you liked this piece you may enjoy my curation posts on this blog. Every Tuesday, “Leaders and Strategies in Real Life” helps you learn about leadership by studying what real leaders do. On Fridays you can wrap up your week with “Weekend Leadership Reading” consisting of choice articles on hot leadership topics culled from the business schools, the business press and major consulting firms.

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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