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 2120: On The Spot

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“Let your conversation be gracious and attractive so that you will have the right response for everyone.”

When we get put, “On the spot”, it can be very uncomfortable.  So much so that the words that come out of our mouth at that moment could lead to much bigger problems for ourselves.  This is why we train business leaders to be ready for inquiries from investors, media or analysts and those that aren’t trained aren’t given access or are told to tell others that they are not allowed to speak externally of the company.  We all have many examples of those who when put on the spot walk away from that moment in regret.  And this can happen internally as well.  The lesson to learn is the same; when we are put on the spot, we are to take a deep breath, step back and as best we can not have to answer or respond in the moment.  More often that not, we can tell the person asking that we will get back to them and use time to our advantage to get us off the spot.  We can’t always avoid being on the spot, but we can manage how we handle ourselves when the moment comes.

There is a reason that gossip is considered bad. It’s because gossip begins with one person putting another person on the spot to talk about someone else.  And when that happens we can end up hurting someone else and ourselves.  I am thinking of two people in particular where no matter who you hear from these two people are known by everyone to have nothing good to say about anyone else.  How lonely it must be for them as others will avoid being with them.  This is the other side of what we are taught in Colossians.  If we start from a place of being gracious and attractive in our language, then it will be much harder for us to either gossip or when put on the spot about anything to not be “good” in our response.

Reference: Colossians 4:6 (New Living Translation)