Sean Ryan

Rest isn’t weakness, it’s fuel for future success Like lilacs blooming, or the Leafs finding a way not to win the Stanley Cup, there's a conversation I seem to have every June: A leader tells me they're taking a vacation. And then, almost as an afterthought, they add: "But I'll still be checking my email." If you’re still working on checking email, you’re not really on vacation. Part of you is still available for work, and the rest of your body, mind, and spirit don’t feel fully...

What a chaotic ER gets right about leading under pressure The Pitt / Max There’s a scene late in the first season of The Pitt I keep thinking about. (Spoiler alert: this post talks about specific plot points; if you haven’t seen the award-winning medical drama, I highly recommend a binge watch.) After the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center’s ER is flooded with more than 60 casualties of a mass shooting at a music festival, Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, the attending physician who runs the...

Thoughts on Warren Buffett’s Leadership Test, and the 7% I recently read two insightful pieces on leadership that really resonated with our philosophy at WhiteWater: one from Fast Company, the other a Medium post riffing on Warren Buffett. Different authors, different angles, but they point at a shared truth about leadership, the same central belief our team keeps coming back to in our work, especially through our Just Lead program, and in the leadership book we’re writing: leadership isn’t...