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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 intelligent disobedience, creating an effective vision, influence, turning skeptics into believers, and measuring leadership.

From Chris Edmonds: Cultivate Intelligent Disobedience
"A recent coaching conversation with a senior leader provided great insights. This client described a situation where an employee followed their company policies but his customer did not feel heard during the interaction."

Wally's Comment: Chris Edmonds has an absolutely stupendous example of intelligent disobedience that you can learn from. But you have to read his post.

From Jesse Lyn Stoner: Characteristics of an Effective Vision: Create a DRIVING Vision
"We provide this definition of vision in our book Full Steam Ahead! Unleash the Power of Vision: 'Vision is knowing who you are, where you’re going, and what will guide the journey.' An earlier definition I wrote is quoted by Zig Ziglar in his book Over the Top: 'A vision is a clearly-articulated, results-oriented picture of a future you intend to create. It is a dream with direction.' Both definitions are accurate, but to more fully describe the characteristics of an effective vision – a vision that drives commitment and direction – I use the acronym DRIVING. It can be helpful as a measure to test the effectiveness of your current vision or as an aid when creating one."

Wally's Comment: Vision gets a lot of praise. Consultants and gurus claim that it's mandatory for success. But you probably never had anyone tell you how to create a vision that drives results. That's what's in this post.

From Mike Myatt: Why Influence Matters
"Leadership without influence – isn’t. In fact, understanding how to leverage the influence factor can make a defining difference in your ability to drive change, build cohesive teams, and to successfully implement strategic vision. As a CEO or entrepreneur your “Influence Quotient” is the IQ you need to pay attention to, as it will be a much greater determinant of your ultimate success than your "Intelligence Quotient" could ever be. Innate, raw intelligence while certainly something to be prized, is much more common and much less powerful than real influence. In today’s post I’ll examine the often misunderstood value of influence"

Wally's Comment: Mike Myatt describes six things about influence that you should know. Number one is "Influence is built on a foundation of trust."

From Terry "Starbucker" St. Marie: It’s A Matter Of Trust: 12 Steps To Turn Skeptics Into Believers
"There are lot of skeptics out there, especially in the workplace,  and who can blame them?"

Wally's Comment: You're almost certain to face this situation sometime in your career. You're the new boss, replacing a boss who was inept or unethical or both. Well guess what? People aren't going to trust you at first. Here's Terry St. Marie, speaking from experience, to give you advice on what to do.

From Dana Theus: Measuring Leadership
"How do you measure leadership? It’s an odd question, isn’t it? Leadership is inherently challenging to even describe because it’s a quality of being human. Psychologists and Change Management Consultants find ways to measure everything and I’m sure they have some metrics for this. However, my Google research on this subject reinforced my experience that most people’s take on measuring leadership is really one of two things: 1) measuring management metrics (e.g., did revenue go up?) Or 2) measuring behaviors, absent their impact."

Wally's Comment: This post is about ways to tell how you're doing. It's not about measuring leadership in a clinical sense. It is about how you can take the measure of your leadership so that you can do better.

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 strategy at Coinstar, American manufacturing, open innovation, how top-level teams really work, and learning about organizational integration from evolutionary psychology.

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 better and live a better life. At Results vs Activities, I join other bloggers with posts on talent development. .

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

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.