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 Ed Batista, Kate Nasser, Lolly Daskal, Mary Jo Asmus, and Chris Edmonds.

From Ed Batista: Spiral Learning and Flow States

“My cyclical journey along the spiral’s coil is similar to the process of tacking my way through Csikszentmihalyi’s flow model above. I start out anxious, as the challenge at hand is greater than my current skill level; my skills develop and I enter a state of balance; my skills continue to develop, and I’m increasingly comfortable, to the point of boredom; I seek out greater challenges, passing through a state of balance once more before returning to anxiety. And the cycle begins again.”

From Kate Nasser: Leaders, Risks of Mislabelling Issues as Personality Conflict

“Leaders who are averse to conflict, quickly mislabel interaction issues as — just a personality conflict.”

From Lolly Daskal: At The Risk of Being Changed

“We are not born into cynicism, anger, tension, or defensiveness. They arise in response to the circumstances of our lives. To be effective as leaders, we have to work through and move beyond those acquired traits, to alter our responses. We have to risk being changed.”

From Mary Jo Asmus: How to have conversations like a jazz musician

“Winton Marsalis has said that the best listener in an improvisational jazz session often ends up contributing the most to the music because they are able to play off whatever is being offered by the other musicians.”

From Chris Edmonds: Love Your Life & Love Your Job

“Current research on happiness (Happy Planet Index) and engagement (Towers Watson Global Workforce Study) indicates that people around the globe don’t experience well-being consistently at work or in their personal lives. When we see a person who is legitimately thrilled at their work experience, we often wonder what they’ve been drinking or smoking!”

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 three things CEOs worry about the most, the bionic bank, three ways to find forgotten innovation, the real reason most women don’t go into tech, according to women, training and performance, and the art of keeping employees from leaving.

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.