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Here's my pick of the five best posts from this week's business blogs. I'm pointing you to posts on leadership assessments, business jargon, learning to coach, the Toyota Way, and employee surveys.

Beginning in July, Dan McCarthy will be hosting a Leadership Development Blog Carnival. Submissions are due the last Saturday of the month for this monthly Carnival. That means this coming Saturday

Dan also has our first post this week.

From Great Leadership: Guide to Leadership Assessments
"I’m often asked is there’s such thing as a leadership “test”, or some kind of assessment to determine how good a leader someone is. While there’s no single silver bullet for assessing leadership capability (at least I don’t think there is, no matter what the assessments salespeople try to tell you), there are a number of useful assessments that can give a leader insights into their development needs. There are hundreds of assessments out there, and some of them are downright silly (the “Find your Star Wars Twin” assessment). It’s always best not to overly rely on any one assessment, and instead look for feedback from a number of sources."

Wally's Comment: This is a great and informative post. If you've ever wondered about the differences between some of the top leadership assessment instruments, read and bookmark this post. It gains strength from the fact that Dan doesn't claim to have surveyed the whole field and he's only recommending instruments he has worked with and found valuable. That's the kind of recommendation I like, from a working pro with direct experience of not only using these tools but comparing them.

From HR Web Cafe: Business jargon watch

Wally's Comment: HRWeb Café is worth adding to your RSS feed because of the wonderful collections of resources they identify. This week, though, here's a post to make you smile, and perhaps shake your head.

From Leadership in Action: Uncomfortable With Coaching? Ease In With the Right Opportunity
"A close friend from my youth had a theory he used jokingly for a number of things in life. He called it the Hot Tub Theory. It goes something like this."

Wally's Comment: The Hot Tub analogy is wonderful and useful when you think about mastering all kinds of skills.

From Systematic HR: Where People Fit in the Toyota Way
"While we’d often believe that Asian companies must be more hierarchical, at Toyota, the collaborative and innovative culture is actually flatter than in leading organizations in the U.S. Regardless of the actual organization structure, the ability to present any idea flattens out the company and allows innovations to happen more quickly and easily."

Wally's Comment: This is not just a good post about the Toyota Production System and culture. It's also a good example of how we're starting to conceive of organizations as social networks and how we're using social network tools to make them more effective.

From Paul Hebert at Fistful of Talent: Your Employees Lie to You...
"An entire industry exists to help you survey your employees and find out what they want and need to be productive, positive, contributing members of your organization. Unfortunately, too often, the results of these surveys will steer you down blind alleys and hurt your engagement efforts."

Wally's Comment: Human beings are funny creatures. There are so many things that influence our behavior, how we think about it, and how we report on it. If you use employee surveys, and especially if you take them at face value, this is a must-read.

Wally's Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. Click here to check it out.

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Wally Bock has helped people learn to be great bosses for more than a quarter century. His latest book, Performance Talk: The One-on-One Part of Leadership, makes learning key leadership principles almost effortless by teaching through a story and providing lists of resources for further growth.

Click here to find out more about Wally's coaching services.

For weekly tips and resources pointers, check our Wally Bock's Three Star Leadership Letter.

Click here to find out more about having Wally speak to your company or convention.