Is your glass half-full?

I’ve been curious about the role optimism plays in leadership, and I am always on the lookout for research that examines whether successful leaders see the glass as half-full. Many of the related surveys I see query optimism about external conditions, particularly the economy. ExecuNet even conducts a monthly Recruiter Confidence Poll that measures something relevant. (By the way, 66 percent of search consultants are confident/very confident that the executive market will improve in the next six months — up from 61 percent in April and 52 percent in March.)

ERE.net, a company that combines the best characteristics of a trade association, publisher, user-generated content community and event planning, has found the key to growth is hiring the best people, no matter what their location and using communications technologies to propel the business forward.

When David Manaster, CEO, ERE.net, founded the firm in 1998, he was living with his parents in Brooklyn, NY, and while he had a business concept that was building steam in the marketplace, he didn’t have a lot of office space to spare. ERE, which began as the Electronic Recruiting Exchange, provides an online destination for corporate and third-party recruiters to gather, post their blogs and view the posts of industry recruitment and retention analysts.

The company produces three physical conference events each year that draw upwards of 1,000 international participants each, and the buzz continues online in webcasts, discussion groups and blogs and in print in a quarterly journal or recruiting. And while today there is a small physical office in New York City, for the most part, the key team members are located around the country from Albany to Orlando to Washington state to California and parts in between.

“The first two employees I had wanted to work from their homes,” Manaster recalls, “and from there it became a matter of preference.” ERE operates in an industry well-known for retention problems. Most B2B media companies replace at least a third of their staffs each year. “It’s become a competitive advantage,” Manaster notes. “We’ve had people who wanted to move to new cities for family or lifestyle reasons. If we insisted on a physical location, we’d have lost crucial employees. To be able to keep them and to attract others with special skills, we have a lot more to offer because we don’t insist on relocation.”

You told us, we listened.

You’ve been writing me to tell me that the biggest challenge you face this year is hiring and then focusing the talent in your organizations. You’ve said great talent is hard to find and given the uncertainties in the economy, you’re finding it harder to motivate that experienced talent to make a change and join your growing business.

On your behalf, we contacted Laurence Haughton, a renowned coach to high-performing businesses and asked him how he would approach hiring. Is it a hunt for experience? Is there a better measure? Click here to learn the key step in hiring a versatile workforce.

In addition, Laurence accepted our invitation to spend an hour with the Growing Business Link community and share some proven strategies for ensuring the success of your business during these uncertain times. We recorded the session, Growing Your Business in Uncertain Times, and it’s now available for download in the GrowingBusinessLink.Com Resource Center.

While you’re there, take a moment to join the discussion where business leaders like you are talking about whether they think the economy is going to be their top problem this year.

How can this community best serve you? I’d like to know.