Olympics CEO John Slusher Drops His #1 Leadership Philosophy

You spent 26 years at Nike. You were the executive vice president of global sports marketing and now you're leading the Olympics paralympics in the LA28 games. What is your leadership philosophy?

I think there's a lot of stuff that goes into leadership, but one thing that I always tend to focus on and kind of keeping it simple is I focus on the same thing, whether I'm coaching first grade girls soccer, to fourth grade tackle football team and then to my executive teams at Nike. And now I'm running the business side of LA28. I've always said to all three groups the concept of work hard, have fun and be a great teammate, that's really simple. Hard work is a big deal and pays off. And that doesn't mean working around the clock. But there's times to work really hard and then there's times relax. It's really hard to work hard and do a great job if you're not enjoying what you're doing. And I always try to tell people that doesn't mean you enjoy everything you do. I've been incredibly lucky to have arguably the two best jobs anyone could have in the sports world. But that doesn't mean there's not parts of those jobs that I don't enjoy and days that aren't great. But in general, I think having, having fun is super important. And lastly is being a great teammate. That is really important, whether that's being the person the person next to you wants to work with, supporting a teammate when they're having a down day or they need help with a project. But I think that concept of being a great teammate, whether you're, you know, at the top of an org chart or at the bottom of the org chart or somewhere in between, and the way you deal with people is super important. So again, work hard, have fun, and being a great teammate is something I've been stressing for years and it's super important to me.