Confession: Sports metaphors for leadership annoy me. Not only are they overused and cliché, they presuppose the virtues of organized team sports. Growing up, I wasn’t very athletic, so I had some pretty lousy experiences with organized team sports. Even though I worked at it and tried my best, I was terrible. My coaches played me for the minimum amount of time allowed by the league, and the star player on one of my teams actually told me that he hated me because I was so bad. Sports education is supposed to be a metaphor for life. It didn’t work out for me.

Even though organized sports failed me, I still liked to be active. Skateboarding drew me in, big-time. I loved watching myself improve. It was an individual sport, even though I could do it with my friends. I competed with myself. Best of all, it came with a subversive, rebellious subculture that looked at the mainstream world and said, “I’m not like you.”

Upon reaching adulthood, I gave up skateboarding, but individual extreme sports still called out to me. Over the years, I’ve done quite a bit: wakeboarding, flyboarding, boogie boarding, paddleboarding, snowboarding, skiing, snowkiting, skydiving, flying, race car driving, rock climbing, and much more. To this day, the thought of joining a pickup game of basketball, soccer, or baseball gives me real anxiety.

A few years ago, I became enamored with GoPro cameras. I got my first GoPro as an award in an innovation competition at work. There is just something about GoPro that beckons you to grab your camera and try something crazy. This tweet embodies this concept perfectly:

I love GoPro’s response to this. Legal liabilities aside, go nuts, and share it! The rise of GoPro’s popularity has as much to do with the camera itself as the massive sharing of footage and pictures by GoPro users. GoPro has a wide-angle lens that captures a first-person view experience perfectly. It has a waterproof and shockproof shell that says, “leave your phone, but bring me with you.” With that combination, the footage becomes an equal or sometimes greater joy than the experience itself. We live in a “pics or it didn’t happen” culture. GoPro turns a tale into a truth. It becomes the reason we try things. Would Jim have run straight at that tornado without a GoPro? Probably not.

Be a HERO

GoPro’s tag line is “Be a HERO.” All of its advertising shows extreme sports heroes doing their heroics. There is a story behind the picture of me wakeboarding at the top of this page. I bought the wakeboard used on Craigslist. I’m being towed by a 30-year-old ski boat. I failed to even get out of the water the first seven times I tried. Once I got up, I figured I was a good enough wakeboarder that I should be able to hold my GoPro on a selfie stick with one of my hands.

I got up the second time, and grabbed this still image off of a few minutes of footage of me doing no real wakeboard tricks, but just trying to stay upright. The picture is awesome. I look like a real wakeboarder. I posted it on Instagram and the maker of the wakeboard picked it up and is using it on their website to sell their wakeboard. I’m a wakeboard model! How weird is that?!? The GoPro turned me from an average nobody into a hero. All I had to do was get out there and try something.

The leadership lesson

I’m taking a long time to get to the point, so here it is. What does any of this have to do with leadership? Sometimes people look at me as some sort of technology leadership hero. Sure, I’ve had some success. I’ve been given plenty of great opportunities to succeed, and I’ve often pulled it off. More than anything, I’ve simply just put myself in challenging circumstances just to see what would happen. The key is to overcome the fear and try something. That’s all it really takes.

To be an organized team sports star, you need some good athletic genes for starters, then you need years of good coaching and skills development. In the technology leadership world this would be somewhat equivalent to having a privileged private education, an ivy league MBA, and a bunch of social connections.

There is a different way for the average technology professional. GoPro can turn anyone into a hero that has the craziness and fearlessness to put themselves in an extreme situation. Similarly, any motivated technology professional can become a leader if they are willing to shed their fear and try.

Technology leadership is a wild ride. If you can stomach the process and stay in the environment, you can be a hero. In essence, this blog is my “pics or it didn’t happen” approach to leadership. I’m recording my experiences and learnings. Not just to be autobiographical, but to demystify leadership. I want to make technology leadership more approachable, more doable. Leadership is attainable for the willing. GoPro transformed me from a sports failure to a wakeboarding hero. Perhaps this blog can be the catalyst that turns you from a technology leader wannabe to a real technology leader hero.

Want to do some additional reading on the influence of GoPro on culture and society? Check out this fascinating article: We Are a Camera by Nick Paumgarten of The New Yorker