Leadership
One life lesson that Olson has carried with him was learned when he was a cabin leader for Kids Across America. As the kids came rushing in to begin their camping adventure, the head leader told Olson and all counselors, “These kids don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.” Olson says he spent the next several weeks learning that aphorism the hard way and took the lesson to heart. It has become a foundation for his leadership style. He elaborates, “It’s not only about new kids coming to camp. Fundamentally, it’s really about interpersonal relations, whether it’s trying to make a sale, doing a business development agreement, or coaching one of your employees. Until that employee knows that you really care about their personal development and their professional development, they’re not going to be super interested in what you have to say, whether it’s a critique to make them better or whether it’s praise.”
Realistically, leadership is more than
showing your charges that you care about them. It also includes the nut and bolts of setting priorities and delegating responsibilities. Olson has a guiding North Star for that too. “I once heard a military general say that his job really changed when he got promoted from colonel,” he says.
“He no longer had to personally execute, but had to lead and set the conditions for all his direct reports to be ultra-successful.” Here’s Olson’s takeaway for executives: “An executive’s job is to no longer execute. My job is to set the conditions, whether that’s resources, training, organizational structure or personnel development, to make each member of my team very successful in what they do. I believe if I can see each member improve and succeed, the byproduct of that is growing business results.”
Family Team
Olson’s principles and philosophies interweave throughout all areas of his life’s tapestry. What is good for business also applies to his family of three young girls, all under the age of 11, who are homeschooled by his wife Lauren. “People usually separate their business and family life,” he begins, “but I tend to look at our family to see if we are performing as a high- performing team. Do we have common values? Are we pursuing something? Is there psychological safety and support for each other even when we come up short? The same business team principles also apply to personal life, even though we usually see those spheres as separate. My family is more important than work. They’re each awesome and I love them.” When
asked what his greatest accomplishment is, Olson pauses to ponder and answers that his family becoming a high-performing team is it. “We make mistakes, but we’re learning from them and getting better as we grow,” he says.
Olson draws inspiration from the example his own father set. “My dad wasn’t a talker, but he just modeled sacrificial generosity,” Olson says. “He was always selflessly serving others. He was a hard worker and always was the first to volunteer to help someone in a time of need. He didn’t talk about these things. He just did them and I watched his actions growing up. I learned a lot about giving and the joy of giving by watching my dad.”
Fitness Foundation
The joy of giving leads us to the nonprofit Olson founded, Element Fitness, that teaches fitness and wellness through the lens of five life elements by providing donation-based fitness classes. He says, “About eight years ago, I started personally doing CrossFit because I was way out of shape and I believed a bunch of lies about myself back then: I thought I was too injured, too old, whatever.”
So, after physically
rejuvenating, Olson took a respite from his current job at Erickson in 2016 and started hosting functional fitness classes as a
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Mar/Apr 2020
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