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 3K239: Gifts Of Work – Power Over Fear

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“For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.”

Fear can be a gift of work. Let’s talk about fear and what it does to each of us in our jobs.  Fear is a real emotion in our jobs, although no one ever really talks about it. It starts with a general insecurity and fear of our job performance and job loss. Long ago, the contract and assurances of lifetime employment was broken. Since then, we all fear at one point or another that supply and demand will take over and the greater supply of talent than demand will catch up with us and we will “be out”. The news will be full this week of year-end stories of companies tightening their belt and having more layoffs. Our job insecurities are fears. We also fear how others will perceive our work and the reactions to the positions and stands that we take. Many drives into the office in the morning or logging onto Zoom are filled with butterflies in our stomach. The problem with living in fear is that we then fall into the timidness that Timothy also describes. Being timid then leads us to stand still and miss opportunities, or worse yet to fail to take the stands that we know we should. We cannot eliminate all fear in our lives but we can recognize and remind ourselves that it is a gift of work because it brings us back to Him to help us through.

And also, that is why Timothy’s verse can make such a huge difference in how we go to work today. Imagine that we could really, truly, replace the feeling of fear with power. Add on love and self-discipline and you have the whole package. Today, as we start our work, think about the areas, issues, and people where we get that feeling of fear inside of us and then pray to have fear replaced with the gift of power that can come from God being taken to work with us!

Reference: 2 Timothy 1:7 (New Living Testament)