I don’t go to the ballet all that often, but when I do the same thing always happens to me. By the time I get to intermission, I’m walking differently. Watching incredible dancers is a little contagious for me. I feel as if I’d like to do a grand jeté and maybe click my heels as I fly through the air. But one thing’s for sure — I’m standing a little taller. You just can’t slump after an hour of ballet.

Watching the Obamas glide through Europe this week I couldn’t help but notice that they were the center of attention wherever they went. There were a couple of particularly striking images that came back to us. First was the Obamas meeting the Queen and Prince Philip. The Queen looked tiny next to the Americans, and the royal husband looked as if he had stumbled into the wrong century. Something revolutionary had happened and he was downright wary.

The next image was of President Obama and Nicholas Sarkozy. Sarkozy is apparently more than a few millimeters shy of six feet, and must have been feeling a powerful vertical tug when he stood next to Obama. In the picture, his head is canted back almost as if in the hope that the height of his forehead will somehow improve things, but the effect reminds me more of when I’m out walking Tesla, our German Shorthaired Pointer and some little dog comes up. I don’t know why Tesla has this effect on little dogs, but they seem to have a huge need for her approval. Maybe it’s that they crave recognition that lowly as they are, they too are dogs, somehow ennobled by sharing dogness with our beautiful hound. Sarkozy was proud to be head of state too, sharing head-of-stateness with the magical President Obama.

I viewed and read a middling amount of coverage of the G-20 conference, and of other events in the UK and France this week, but no-one seemed to capture the essence of what the fact of Barack and Michelle Obama being the new first family of the U.S. means to the rest of the world. Yes, Obama faces a challenge similar to FDR’s, and he has a lot of Lincoln’s qualities, and he even has much of the megawatt charm and wit of JFK. Obama is like them, and he is completely different. He is an intellectual, a serious writer. He has wisdom. The speed at which he became comfortable with the weight of the office was astonishing, as if he had been preparing his entire life to bear the burden. His stride to a podium is more than just an athlete’s gate, it’s as if he, not Rahm, had been the dancer.

You see, I don’t think it’s just Sarkozy that Obama has up on their toes. I think its the G- 20, and all the other leaders he visits, and the populations of their respective countries, and most Americans, too.

Great leadership is transformative. Most of us are going to be beneficiaries of someone who just might be one of the greats. On your toes!