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 Anne Perschel, Suzi McAlpine, Aad Boot, Chris Edmonds, and Jesse Lyn Stoner.

From Anne Perschel: How to Give Women Effective Feedback

“Learning how to give women effective feedback begins with recognizing and understanding the role unconscious gender bias plays in how we perceive, talk about, and evaluate women in professional roles. The next step in learning how to give women effective feedback involves becoming aware of your own tendencies and making needed adjustments.”

From Suzi McApline: The Fundamental Attribution Error: what it is and why you should know about it

“The fundamental attribution error is our tendency to attribute the negative behaviours of others to their character, while we attribute our own negative behaviours to our environment. In other words, we like to believe we do bad things because of situations we are in, but somehow we assume others do bad things because they are predisposed to being bad! In the same way, we often attribute other people’s successes to their environments and our own success to our character.”

From Aad Boot: Why the Open Mind Always Outperforms the Closed One

“People confronted with the fast changes in our sometimes chaotic and uncertain world can have the reflex to close themselves off to the unknown. Consciously or subconsciously they adopt a closed mind. When we do it collectively this closeness can become part of our culture. People, teams, organizations, and whole societies can seriously suffer from ‘closed-mindedness’. Those who manage to cultivate and maintain an open mind are far more successful on the long run. Why?”

From Chris Edmonds: Hire great leaders with these tips

“My experience and research indicates that an aligned culture with caring leaders boosts employee engagement by 40 percent, customer service by 40 percent, and results and profits by 35 percent. That’s a powerful, positive impact. How can you hire more genuine, caring, inspiring leaders? During your interview process, don’t focus exclusively on past accomplishments or accolades – focus equally on these tips:”

From Jesse Lyn Stoner: 10 Awful Truths Every Leader Needs to Know

“You might get away with ignoring these truths for the short term. You can rally people with charisma and through fear for the short term. But if you care about the long term, to successfully face today’s challenges, leaders need to know how to deal with these 10 truths.”

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 rise of the ‘Superbosses,’ three posts about manufacturing, Agile at Orange France, getting more Black women into the c-suite, and the best companies for work-life balance.

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.