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 Todd Ordal, Terri Klass, Steve Keating, Kate Nasser, and Art Petty.

From Todd Ordal: CEO Coaching: Work-Life Balance Is Silly

“A recent LinkedIn post from The World Economic Forum extols the cities where the ‘best’ work-life balance exists (Helsinki, Oslo and Zurich). I love the topic but detest the phrase ‘work-life balance.’ Isn’t work a subset of life?”

From Terri Klass: Don’t Be Afraid To Lead With Your Authentic Self

“I was recently speaking to a colleague who worried that if they acted in the way that they were most comfortable they would be less admired. They were concerned that if they said what they honestly felt about a difficult situation the team was facing, they would literally be ‘booed.’ Really? Telling our team members what actions or decisions we would make to empower our team forward would be shunned? I am going to bet that many leaders have had the difficult choice to agree with the way their team wanted to go even though they thought it was a wrong direction or risk sharing an opposing truth.”

From Steve Keating: Successful Communication

“Good communicators know that just because something was said doesn’t mean it was heard. Great communicators know that even if it was heard it doesn’t mean it was understood.”

From Kate Nasser: 8 Uncaring Workplace Reasons to Create Caring Workplace

“An uncaring workplace creates many challenges that undermine performance, resilience, and retention of great employees. Yet this explanation is not always enough for many leaders and managers. As surprised as I am at this, I know that more specifics help them understand. So here are several uncaring workplace reasons to create a caring workplace.”

From Art Petty: Commit to Helping Your New Managers Succeed from the Start

“New manager development is a problem to be solved by the promoting manager. Training without ongoing observation, teaching, and coaching isn’t the solution. And, the Sink-or-Swim approach for new manager development is definitely not the solution, yet it’s still prevalent in our workplaces.”

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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