Here’s another business leadership lesson from a non-business source: my favorite kind. It‘s about the most vital of all leadership traits: enthusiasm.
“Enthusiasm is contagious,” It is said. “Spread it.” This is about one of the most enthusiastic people any of us have ever seen.
Maestro Leonard Bernstein
On this date – August 24 in 1918 – Leonard Bernstein was born. “Lenny,” as he was lovingly and admiringly called, was “arguably the most highly esteemed, influential, and charismatic American classical music personality of the twentieth century,” according to Jonathan Cott, author of Dinner with Lenny: The Last Long Interview with Leonard Bernstein.
Agreed. (The book, by the way, is delightful.)
Who was Leonard Bernstein?
Beyond classical music, Lenny was a scholar, an activist, a humanitarian, a teacher, and the finest example of a global citizen far and near. He was widely and instantly recognized wherever on this globe he traveled.
Anyway, with all that can be said about Lenny, I wish to relay one thing he always used to emphasize. Highly energetic – mentally, physically, and spiritually – to the very end of his life, he would repeatedly explain that the word “enthusiasm” was derived from the Greek adjective entheos, meaning “having the god within,” with the “attendant sense of living without aging.” (Borrowed from Cott.)
A Leader’s Breakthrough
Let’s look at the living without aging thing for a moment. At age 24, Bernstein made his major conducting debut with the New York Philharmonic at short notice – and without so much as one rehearsal – after guest conductor Bruno Walter came down with the flu. The challenging program included works by Schumann, Wagner, and Richard Strauss. Strauss.
The next day, The New York Times carried the story on page one and declared in an editorial, “It’s a good American success story. The warm, friendly triumph of it filled Carnegie Hall and spread far over the air waves.”
Many newspapers around the country carried the story, which, in combination with the concert’s live national CBS Radiodcast, propelled Bernstein to instant fame.
There it was: Lenny’s aura was what made the day, although his musicianship, scholarship, technique, and approach all played large parts in this success.
For the rest of his life, Lenny continued as such. He was one of the greatest conductors of all time, enthusiastic from the beginning to the end of his storied life, and a global leader as a result.