This list of 100 great blogs is ranked by two different factors. One algorithm calculating a score based on five different factors by numeric hard facts about each blog, such as number of fans in social media, alexa rank, Google Page Rank and some secret search results. The other factor is a personal touch where I have evaluated each blog giving a score rating from 1-10 on design and personal all over ranking where content, value, usefulness and readability was considered. Dead links, images not showing or hard to read is bad news. If your blog has not been updated for a while it counts against you. Some are not included because of this; a few are included despite of this, because the content is not out of date and probably never will be. It is a great pleasure to announce the winners of the 2011 NeverMind-awards!

Daniel H Pink  is the winner of the 2011 NeverMind-award #1 – Best leadership blog.

The Winner:
Daniel Pink

Daniel is a great writer and author of one of my absolute favorite books – Drive – A fascinating book about motivation. His writings are to the point, easy to understand and packed with useful and inspirational advice. Daniel has a large and well deserved crowd of followers in social media. One of his best traits is that he understands the value of sharing knowledge. This trait is easily found at his blog and in his tweets. You are bound to learn something, if you read Daniels blog and follow him on twitter. Daniels blog is clean, it is easy to find subscribe links. His blog posts are easy to read, fun and useful, it is easy to share content.

Visit Daniel Pink’s Blog – Follow Daniel on Twitter.

Best Design:
Tanveer Naseer

At #41 we find the winner of the best design award. A creative and good blog from Tanveer!
What can I say? Take a look at this blog! As a former web designer and web developer with a sense for minimalistic design, this blog blew my mind, ehm… not for a minimalistic reason.. but because this is killer web design by perfect example. His blog design is fresh, fun and it works. This is not just some fancy halfway cool stuff, but the design is 100 % true all the way. I find myself searching for a hidden link or gem on his side (Tanveer, you need to make a hidden link somewhere!) and I do fancy a cup of coffee while reading his blog. And his Twitter account follows up with the same fresh look. But like a good cake, decorations are not all. His blog is also packed with good advice and great content. I got a feeling that this blog will do better next year.

Visit Tanveer Naseer’s Blog – Follow Tanveer on Twitter.

The complete list

Take a look at the complete top 100 leadership ranking here.

Congratulations to the winners, and I hope you will discover some great new blogs that you’ll fall in love with.

Follow me on twitter.

Do you think you influence people as a leader? Most likely you do. The first experience you will get when being promoted from co-worker to boss is that what you say is not trivial anymore. Your words are being analyzed and battered to pieces just to figure out “what you really mean” – speaking to your co-workers will unfortunately never be quite the same. Today I am going to write about building barriers and how to strengthen them.

Building your tribe

Using words like “us” and “we” will include people in your tribe. It is important to be aware of the effect these words has, as people want to belong in a group. By talking about your department or your company with “us” and “we” you are branding your tribe and making border for who is “us” and “the others”. It is like putting your arm forward and embracing the people accepted in your crowd.

Creating your enemy

We all know that in order to create loyal followers you need to create an enemy. By using words like “them”, “they” or “the others” you are creating a distance between your tribe and those others.
“Those guys in accounting” – You are creating bad lines of communication, when you speak about people in your own company in an alienating way.
“Us” is those inside your circle the people you are calling “them” is the others, the strangers, the people that is hard to work with, the people at the other side of the wall.

Watch out where you create your borders

If you pay no attention you might create a separated group within your company. Or a divided city within your own country, it just doesn’t work in the long run. You might want to keep the borders outside your own company? Typical inner-city borders are departments or divisions blaming each other for problems.

Our responsibility to bring down the walls.

As a leader or an employee you must remember who your tribe is. At most companies you have one chief, a group of chief advisors (chief wannabes) and a few more minor chiefs trying to do their best in middle management. Your tribe is your company. “Us” is all of the employees. There is no “them” – “them” is the competition.

1. Always use “us” and “we”
2. If disagreements between leaders, find a solution first and include and inform employees about what we found out at the pow-wow.
3. Do not involve employees by blaming “them” for problems. WE have problems, we solve them.
4. The only time to use “they” or “them” is when you are giving praise to someone. “they did a good job and we are all grateful”
5. Avoid internal blame game, identify the problem and discuss solutions. Ask questions like: What can we do to solve this? Is there anything we can do to assist?
6. Do not call upper management for “them” and leaders should not call employees “them” it is all we. If we f**k up, we will all be without a job.

“what are you going to do about the problem?” – How about using “what should we do to solve this problem?” instead?

So, how are we going to spread the word guys? How about using twitter to reach them?
And we all follow @frodeheimen don’t we? And please share with us other ways to bring down walls in the comments field below.

Thank you so much for reading my blog.



Wall demolisher and motivational gardener

Having a micromanaging boss seems to be a huge problem if I should believe statistics based on visitors to my blog. 20 % of all search engine traffic uses keywords related to micromanagement, which indicates that this really is a problem in the office. It is interesting to see that most common search phrases are probably written by employees looking for a solution to their unbearable work environments. But I do not see any phrases related to managers looking for a solution to their problems? Do they even know that they are micromanaging?

Two older posts about micromanagement.

About a year ago I wrote two “best selling” blog posts about Micromanagement. They have been read by more than 14.000 people and are the most read blog posts at my blog, and they are still popular. So having a micromanaging manager seems to still be a problem. I wrote one about dealing with micromanagement and one about consequences of micromanagement. Enjoy.

But where are you micromanager?

These two blog posts are read by employees tired of your detail oriented rule. But how do we get managers to seek help for their behavior? And is micromanagement all bad?
I once had a manager that would tell me if she would micromanage, and if you know why and for how long it is actually ok and a learning opportunity.

<strong>Why do a micromanager micromanage?</strong>

I am going to share some experiences and look at some psychology. I have been promoted and seen people replacing me in direct line of command, doing my old job. Micromanagers are often people haunted by a strong work ethics and a special interest in your area of expertise.

Replacement in the trail of promotion

If your boss once held your position, it might just be a strong need to make sure this job is done as good as it used to.
A good way is to be proactive and ask about what you should report, how you should report it and ask to be mentored. This will prove that you are interested in learning from the best and that you are interested to inform. “I know you are busy, how can I help you to be more efficient?” – I feel that this kind of micromanager is the easiest to get of your back.

Super talent rising

Another problem is when the best employee is promoted. This is the “go to”-guy. Nobody does the job as good as him. So the promotion is earned, however leadership skills and technical skill is not necessary the same. The result is leaving this manager with headaches, when the rest of the crowd is messing up lacking their best team player. Some team players are best playing at the field. When you bench your best players they hunger for more time on the field. It’s the same with a promoted super talent. If you mess up, they might just take over the game. This might be a tough nut to crack as they tend to do, instead of show. Being one step ahead is the solution to this game as well. Flattery helps; “How did you get so good? What do I need to do to get as good as you? Do you recommend any books or classes?” and “If you need to correct me, I would learn more from doing it myself, so if you would just assist that would be lovely” An office wizard needs to trust the rest of the team, trouble is that superheroes feel that nobody is doing the job as good as they did. But they will if you let them.

It’s all in the details

A micromanager is often extremely dedicated to details. I do not care about the colors of my furniture, I need somewhere to sit and rest. I do not care how you solve it, as long as there is a solution. I remember doing math at school, I often found the correct answer but not by the book. I even “invented” another account in economics to balance the numbers correctly. The answers where correct, the methods, well let’s call them creative bookkeeping. These people are often neat freaks, it needs to be clean, they spot dust beyond the horizon. They can spend way too much effort in composing the perfect sentences in an email. They will frown if you are a sluggard. They hate short cuts and they want the company to be 100 % perfect. Not bad actually, just very exhausting for us used to short cuts. This person is probably going to burn out like firecracker and they do too much work. “Good enough” is not even in their dictionary. These micromanagers are almost impossible to rescue, because it is not all wrong. Being detail oriented is a good thing in perfecting your business. But let’s face it; too much is over the top. Try to figure out what areas are the most important and improve your eye for details in those areas. Challenge your boss to explain what is good enough. Most employees will feel like underachievers under the rule of this manager, resulting in low self-esteem and they quit. I am a bit short on how to deal with this kind of manager, if you have any good advice, please do share!

Micropressure

Some managers use micromanagement as a pressure or leverage to get your ass out of the company. They run you over with details, comment on all your work in order to get you to leave. The reasons might vary from personal to professional matters. You might not be liked or not doing a good enough job, but too good to get fired. If you are among the few that feels micromanaged, sound the alarm. You might start your job hunt right away. The upside is that they might be willing to give you a good recommendation to get rid of you. This is a conscious use of tools to get you out of their way. Take a hint and use your skill somewhere where you will be valued.

Micromanagement best practices

Let’s face it, micromanagement might be useful. I am glad you are reading this blog; it means that when you become a leader, you will try to avoid micromanaging. But if you need to, please inform upfront that you are. Why you are and for how long you are going to micromanage and at last, what are the results you want. Oh wait, that is called teaching…

I would hope that you could share your story if you have confronted a micromanager and succeeded in change? Please do share it with other readers as this is something employees appreciate. I would love to hear your story of micromanagement, good or bad.