By Olajide Hamzat
By all metrics, Amofin Beulah Adeoye, the legal luminary redefining leadership and philanthropy, stands out among his peers by an unmistakable margin. Thoughtful and reflective, Adeoye is a leader with the temperament and vision to lift the people through change and transformation. Quiet and cerebral, caring and compassionate, fearless and firebrand, Amofin Adeoye embodies the can-do spirit that makes Nigeria, despite her contradictions and complexities, a fascinating nation.
In Nigeria, for instance, defining what makes a leader can sometimes be a tough task, but in this piece, I will explore and dive into the brilliant book of Patrick Lencioni, entitled Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Writing about the five dysfunctions of a team, Lencioni identified an absence of trust, fear of the conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results as the culprits that often derail an organization from achieving its desired results.
“A fractured team,” Lencioni clarified in the book, “is just like a broken arm or leg; fixing it is always painful, and sometimes you have to rebreak it to make it heal correctly. And to rebreak it hurts a lot more than the initial break because you have to do it on purpose”. Inside looking out, Amofin is by far an excellent team player. As one African proverb once contended: if you want to go fast, go by alone, but to go far, you have to go with others. While organizations recognize individual brilliance and uniqueness, their overall succ-! Jonesability of each worker to set aside their egos and team up for the growth of the company.
As Lencioni noted, building a team takes time and patience, but Amofin believes that not building a team is a defeat of anything we set out to achieve. In the corporate world, the ability to inspire and encourage people to deliver on their tasks is essential to overall success. Plus, when it comes to prodding people to do their jobs, a trusted leader will get things done better than the one with a big ego. In effect, Amofin Beulah was able to achieve all-round success partly because he understood the five dysfunctions of a team. This is evident in his career trajectory and philanthropic interventions and, importantly, his relationship with the people. Without mincing words, absence of trust remains one of Nigeria’s biggest problems. Whether the trust deficit is between the leaders and the led, people and the institution, the mistrust, to mildly put it is quite palpable. Ask an average Nigerian on the street whether she trusts those in government. Recently, Kemi Badenoch, leader of the British Conservative Party, stirred the hornet’s nest when she claimed officers of the Nigeria Police Force once stole his brother’s personal belongings.
Her cold indictment opened up a flurry of criticisms and condemnations that put the law enforcement agency under the dark spotlight. As criticism greeted her negative portrayal of the police, many Nigerians flooded social media recounting their ordeals in the hands of corrupt police officers. For Amofin Beulah Adeoye, building trust and sustaining it is key to leading people through the changing times. Like Lencioni, Amofin Beulah equally believes that trust cannot be built in an atmosphere of invulnerability. “Trust” Lencioni admitted “is the foundation of real teamwork. And so, the first dysfunction is a failure on the part of team members to understand and open up to one another”.
Catch me next week for continuation.
Olajide Hamzat writes about the various prospect and potential of Oyo state while projecting Amofin Beulah Adeoye as a solution provider, problem solver and creative, adaptive and innovative leader and thinker with compassion and empathy.
