Subscribe to the Three Star Leadership Blog

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.

Contact Wally about coaching, consulting, or speaking to your group.

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 mistakes, leadership style, faint signals of low trust, open enrollment executive education, and corporate culture.

From Management Excellence: Mistakes are the Raw Ingredients of Leadership Courage
"Somewhere along the road to making my share of mistakes, an interesting thing happened to my fear of making mistakes. It disappeared! And don’t misinterpret the statement. I don’t seek out mistakes and I don’t not (double negative by design) care about mistakes, but, I just don’t fear them.  In fact, I’m more concerned about not riding on the cutting edge of what I believe to be the right thing for my stakeholders than I am about falling off and getting shredded in the process."

Wally's Comment: Once you learn that you can survive mistakes it gives you courage. Art Petty offers you eight situations where that leadership courage is crucial.

From LeaderLab: A Leader’s Style Can Be Helpful For Some But Exhausting For Others
"New research published in the Journal of Applied Psychology provides more support for the idea that leaders need to know their employees, because one style of leader behavior does not fit all."

Wally's Comment: It's different strokes for different folks. Bret Simmons shares the details of recent research.

From Leadershipmutt: Three not-so-obvious signs that trust is lacking on your team
"It is amazing how many things boil down to a lack of trust.  Team members not sharing information?  Must be lack of trust.  Not working collaboratively?  Starts with trust.  Not listening?  Probably means they are not trusting either. Sometimes it's easy to assess the level of trust--it is painfully obvious as team members throw each other under the bus, keep others in the dark, verbally assault one another. But what are the less obvious signs?"

Wally's Comment: When you're in charge, you'll do better if you're attuned to the faint, early warnings of crisis. Susan Finterty's post will help you.

From Great Leadership: The Top Global Open Enrollment Executive Education Providers 2010
"University based executive education programs are often a once-in-a-lifetime developmental experience, and can enhance any resume. These 1-4 week programs are an excellent way to develop leadership and management skills, as well as build external networks that can last forever."

Wally's Comment: Dan McCarthy lists the best programs and shares advice on when to go this route and how to make good decisions.

From Mick Yates: Corporate culture, being different ... and plastic chickens!
"I was interviewing a candidate for a senior position the other day. At the end, I asked, as I always do, whether anything came up in the course of our discussion that needed further explanation. His answer? 'Well, I’ve never been interviewed by someone who has a plastic chicken on his table, along with sticks of dynamite (candy!), plastic rattles and the like. What’s the story?'"

Wally's Comment: This post is simply insightful and delightful. Read it to find out why.

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" which features five choice articles from the business schools, the business press and major consulting firms. The last issue had pointers to articles about Fortune's Businesspeople of the Year, one key to success at Virgin, Cisco studying their management, abusive bosses and their brains, and Southwest Airlines' midlife crisis.

Here, on Three Star Leadership, I post things that will help a boss at any level do better and live a better life. At Results vs Activities, I join other bloggers with posts on talent development. My blog at the Toolbox for HR is People and the Changing Workplace .

Find out more about my latest book, Ruthless Focus: How to use key core strategies to grow your business or just jump right over to Amazon and buy a few copies.

If you're a boss, you should check out my Working Supervisor's Support Kit.

And be sure to stop by at Weekly Leader where I'll try to get you thinking about The Challenge of the Week.

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.