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The 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.

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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 on employee engagement, feedback, supervision, communication, and what kind of leader you are.

From All Things Workplace: What, Really, Is Employee Engagement?
"It's easy to toss the phrase du jour around in meeting rooms and cubicles; but when it comes to commitment and action, there has to be a common understanding of what we're really talking about. The more I watch Employee Engagement discussed, the more I realize that the people in the room are coming at it from different viewpoints."

Wally's Comment: Employee engagement is one of the hot buzzphrases today. This post will help you cut through the clutter to the concepts. There are also pointers to more engagement resources.

From Weekly Leader: 5 Tips to Get the Feedback You Need Now
"Leaders need more feedback than ever - and they’re less likely to get it. You need more feedback because chances are, if you still have your leadership job, you’re doing what used to be two or three jobs. Regional sales VPs are now also running channel partnerships. The US director of R&D has taken on worldwide responsibility. The office manager is somehow also covering the accounts payable vacancy. Chances are you don’t even know what you don’t know about some of these roles. Plus, with your market environment in flux, hard decisions are coming your way faster than ever."

Wally's Comment: Good feedback is always hard to come by. And the higher you go on the org chart, the harder it is to get an accurate reality check. Now multiply that by the additional troubles that tough times and shifting organizational landscapes bring. That's why you should read this post.

From Slacker Manager: Teach Them How to Find It Teach Them How to Find It
"One of the things I learned early on as a manager is that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t teach my team all the answers to all the questions they’ll get about anything. There’s too much information to know, and too much information changes too often. And it frustrated the heck out of me. How could they be effective if they didn’t know everything about everything and anything folks would ask? And then I realized it was right there in front of me: I had to teach them how to find the information they needed in a quick, easy fashion. Aha!"

Wally's Comment: Here's a slap-your-head insight that will change the way you think about being a boss.

From You're not the Boss of Me: Lack of Communication You Say?
"Once upon a time, I worked with banking executives.  They were all very good, smart people with a wide range of talents, skills and personalities.  However, when faced with a problem that involved people this sentence always seemed to come up. "It’s a lack of communication" "

Wally's Comment: In the old days we blamed all our problems on the communists. Now we blame communications.

From Management Excellence: What Leadership List Are You On?
"At the beginning of my leadership workshops, one of the ice-breaking activities is to have the participants think about and jot down the characteristics and behaviors of great and lousy leaders that they’ve experienced in their careers."

Wally's Comment: Just this week someone described Art Petty as "charismatic." I don't know about that, but I do know that he can turn out a provocative blog post. This is one of his best.

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.