Author Archives: Rusty Rueff

About Rusty Rueff

Rusty Rueff, author of purposed worKING. Rusty Rueff is the former Chairman Emeritus of The GRAMMY Foundation in Los Angeles. He most recently completed the successful 16 month leadership role as Coordinating National Co-Chair for Technology for Obama (T4O) for the reelection of President Obama and ten-years of Board service and President of the Board of Trustees of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. Corporately, most recently Rueff was the Chief Executive Officer at SNOCAP, Inc. until the acquisition of the company by imeem, Inc. in April 2008. Before joining SNOCAP in 2005, he was Executive Vice President of Human Resources at Electronic Arts (EA) from 1998 until 2005. He was also with the PepsiCo companies for more than ten years, with the Pratt & Whitney division of United Technologies for two years, and in commercial radio as an on-air personality for six years. Rusty holds an M.S. in counseling and a B.A. in radio and television from Purdue University. In 2003 he was named a distinguished Purdue alumnus, and he and his wife, Patti, are the named benefactors of Purdue’s Patti and Rusty Rueff School of Visual and Performing Arts. He is a corporate director of Glassdoor.com and runcoach. He is the co-founder and Executive Committee Member of T4A.org, serves on the Founding Circle of The Centrist Project and a founding Board Member of The GRAMMY Music Education Coalition. He is also the co-author of the book Talent Force: A New Manifesto for the Human Side of Business. Rusty and his wife, Patti, reside in Hillsborough, CA and Charlestown, R.I.

day 3K257: The Watchouts – Whisperers

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“A troublemaker plants seeds of strife; gossip separates the best of friends.”

What’s a little gossip around the Keurig machine really? A morsel here and there makes the day more interesting doesn’t it?  I can’t wait to text and tell what I just heard about so and so and who they were with over lunch today.  It feels good to be the first to post what was just overheard in the hallway about impending organization changes coming.  Oh, these temptations to become a “Whisperer” (Jim VandeHei’s term).  Whisperers are always trading on rumors and gossip with each opportunity they can find.  Their currency is information that shouldn’t be shared because more often or not it isn’t true and at the worst it is private and being used to influence a point of view or position, or undermine another person. We know whisperers and we also know that their mainstay lifeline is us when we feed them by listening and passing along the gossip. Another watchout with whisperers is that what they are saying about other people, they are saying the same about us.  Because we think they are good co-workers or friends does not protect us.  Whisperers must whisper and gossip and we are just as ripe of material as the next person.

Solomon was wise. He knew our hearts and our tendencies.  He knew that we like to trade in gossip and rumors and while he may not have imagined it, God knew that someday industries (big ones) would be built upon gossip.  So, God gave us in His word a warning.  We are not to be gossipers for doing so will ruin our lives.  Ruin, you say?  Yes, for what we don’t know is the life that God had in store for us but we never saw it because we continued to ignore and/or disobey His commands for our lives.  So, this might be an easy one for some and harder for others but for all of us we should not become one of the office whisperers.

Reference: Proverbs 16:28