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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 moving an elephant, bringing conflict on your team to the surface, leadership for good, leading as an act of love, and managing in a complex world.

From Jesse Lyn Stoner: Create an Unbalancing Force If You Want To Move an Elephant
"Chris is unhappy at work. He thinks the work is boring, and he doesn’t like his boss or co-workers. Why doesn’t he quit? The answer lies in Newton’s First Law: An object continues to do whatever it happens to be doing and resists change unless an unbalancing force is exerted upon it. An Unbalancing Force is needed to overcome resistance to change. The amount of Chris’s unhappiness is not great enough to unbalance him.  And no strong vision of an attractive alternative entices him to move."

From Karin Hurt: 5 Ways to Surface Conflict and Live to Tell About It
"We all know deep in our hearts that teams need conflict."

From Mary Jo Asmus: Real Power for Good
"Leaders can be powerful. Successful leaders recognize what it means to have power and to use it in a grounded way for the good of the organizations and communities in which they lead."

From Ed Batista: Leading Is an Act of Love
"Love is a big word and a frightening one, and we often hesitate to use it in the professional realm, at least in any meaningful way. I suspect that the problem lies with our narrow definition of the term--we hear 'love' and automatically think of romantic love, or familial love, and it seems embarrassing or even inappropriate to apply the term to our professional relationships. But in the best of those relationships it's love we feel--not romantic love or familial love, but love nonetheless, and as leaders our ability to summon and express that love can be a powerful force."

From Harold Jarche: Managing in Complexity
"As our markets and technologies get more complex, we need new models to get work done. For instance, we know that creative work can yield more innovation, yet our workplaces usually stifle creativity. Many of our practices are still premised on work being simple or complicated. Simple systems are easily knowable, whereas complicated systems, while not simple, are still knowable through analysis. These can be easily managed. However, complex systems are not fully knowable, though they can be partially understood through interaction with them. This is antithetical to many workplace control protocols."

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" points you to choice articles from the business schools, the business press and major consulting firms. The last issue had pointers to articles about building insight, Lincoln as a management guru, finding time to manage, stories about Mary Kay and Barnes and Noble, frugal innovation, the Dunbar number and social networks, three dimensional strategy, the perfume industry, magazines and outsourcing, as well as surveys, studies, statistics, and lists.

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.