Leadership Lessons From Dancing Guy

By Aaron Mansworth, Managing Director at Trigon Hotels

Just over two years ago, Trigon Hotels took a leap of faith by signing up to be one of the first users of a new employee engagement software run by a small Irish start-up, Workvivo. Sure there were other, bigger, more well established companies that offered similar solutions to the one we were looking for, but we liked the grit, passion, nerve and creativity of the small Cork team at Workvivo, so we made a decision to join them, as their ‘first follower’ – one of the first company’s to sign up to their employee engagement solution.

Two years later, that ‘small start-up’ is now a global brand, with clients in over 50 countries around the world and it is about to treble its workforce with support from Enterprise Ireland.

Now you would think, that this long into the game a company like that would be busy celebrating and sweet-talking their big new clients, but instead, they reached out to us, their first ‘follower’, with a beautiful piece of commissioned art, a bespoke piece created by local cork artist Jason O’Gorman. The art was a wonderful re-imagining of the ‘First Follower: Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy’ video, a concept which was introduced to the Workvivo team by Trigon Hotel’s Strategic Director of HR Kathleen Linehan.

For those of you who haven’t yet seen it, this blog will make a lot more sense when you do and it takes just 30 seconds to watch it here…

This piece of art demonstrated many things, the biggest one being that at the heart of Workvivo’s continued success is its customer focus, creativity and integrity. The second being a reminder that without our brave followers, we are just a ‘lone shirtless nut dancing in a field’.

In short, what this has reinforced for me this week is not the need to be a leader, but the need for trust, collaboration and support, without which, during these troubling times, we won’t survive. There’s nothing that Cork people (and indeed Irish people!) are better at than collaboration, and supporting others until we reach great heights. If you do one thing this week, reach our to your company’s first follower and thank them for their continued support, or become the ‘first follower’ of a small initiative – with your support, it can become something great.

As the video says: This is how we gain momentum. This is how we make a movement. And now more than ever, that’s exactly what we need.