What is enthusiasm? What difference does it make? Can you tell when someone has it? Who would you rather work with: someone with or without this characteristic?
Enthusiasm comes from the ancient Greek. According to Wikipedia it originally meant possessed by a god. Today we normally we apply the term to someone who is excited and engaged in their endeavors.
So what does it look like? According to Mark McGuiness a coach and trainer, it is different than confidence in that confidence is about you; enthusiasm is about your subject or others. It is not necessarily bubbling over with joy or excitement but there is an intensity of focus and attention on our subject. You can sense a real joy in a person doing work enthusiastically. Again I ask you, “Do you want to work with enthusiasm or with someone who is just getting along”?
How do we generate and keep our enthusiasm alive? If you Google “Creating Enthusiasm” you get 7.6 million results. I guess there are that many ideas. What I observe in enthusiastic people is the following traits: They are
– Passionate about their subject. This in turn means they have spent considerable time learning the subject so they are also –
– Knowledgable they know the subject inside and out. It is almost second nature to them. They are so good they can almost respond instinctively. Look at a good martial artist on the mat, they move seemingly without thinking.
– Creative, they have found a creative expression of who they are and what they believe in through this endeavor. We are meant to be creative and to find that unique way to express ourselves.
– By our physiology when you think about the laughing clubs in India, they gather on a regular basis and just start laughing. There is no joke or funny picture they just start acting as if they are laughing and soon they are. We can act enthusiastic and soon we are.
Enthusiasm is one of those elusive traits (7.6 million viewpoints on it) but when we can tap our enthusiasm is it like we are possessed we deliver outstanding results and we have fun.
Have an enthusiastic day
Hi John,
I think you pose an interesting question. “Would you rather work with someone who is enthusiastic, or someone who is not?” I think that we’ve all run into enough people in our lives who lacked enthusiasm to know that we would prefer to work with someone who is enthusiastic.
Take this to the next logical step. If you had a problem, would you want to have the person helping you be enthusiastic about helping you, or just really not care? I think we would all agree that we want the person who is enthusiastic… who cares.
Take another step, should a company want employees to help their customers who are enthusiastic or employees who really don’t care? I think we would all agree that we want enthusiastic employees.
So why do so few companies focus on creating enthusiastic employees who really care about what they are doing? I think it’s because they haven’t made the very logical connection between enthusiastic employees and happy customers.
Thanks for the article.
Thanks for your comments Dave,
As you and I have discussed over many a cup of coffee companies that understand the power of enthusiasm, of the effect that culture has and the importance of attitude (along with all of the other things that drive a business) are more successful than those that just mind their P’s and Q’s