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 3K229: Gifts Of Work – Virtuous Friendships

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“Many will say they are loyal friends, but who can find one who is truly reliable?”

A gift of work is that we can establish life-long friendships with those whom we would never had met if not for working for the same company at the same time.  I have a few of those, what writer Arthur Books calls, Virtuous Friendships.  He grounds his work on this topic in Aristotle.  In our work we can have friendships of “transaction”.  We’d say these are real friendships that we care about the other person but once we don’t work together anymore, they are gone.  Then there are friendships of “admiration”. We are friends but the friendship is based on the admiration of a particular attribute like leadership, creativity, wealth, family, interests, etc.  This focus and even dependence isn’t all bad, but the friendship can deteriorate when the common interest or admiration is gone.  The goal is the “Virtuous Friendship”. Brooks describes this level of friendship this way: “It’s just inherently satisfying. You like being together (and doing random not very important things together or one thing that is deeply shared – like faith) that is developing a very beautiful friendship, a very positive link. These real friendships are intrinsically satisfying.”  The gift of work here is that those we work with are a fantastic gateway to move from Transactional or Admiration Friendships to Virtuous Friendships that can last a lifetime.  Are we accepting this gift with others around us at work?

There is no more Virtuous Friendship than the one we can have with Jesus.  He and we have a common interest.  That common interest is us.  He cares more deeply about us than we do ourselves and He is in it for us, not for Him. He’s not transactional with us, nor does His friendship decline when we fail Him or let Him down in a way that we know He doesn’t admire.  Yes, He can be our most Virtuous Friend, if we want.

Reference: Proverbs 20:6 (New Living Translation)