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 1887: How To End An Argument

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“A hot-tempered person starts fights;a cool-tempered person stops them.”

We can be real here, we are all going to get into an argument at some point or another.  If we think we aren’t then we are just naive.  This past week the CEO of one of my boards asked me to attend a meeting where there was a conflict with a service provider that needed to be resolved.  I did my homework before going into the meeting to ensure that we were on the right side of the conflict and once I was assured of this, I counseled the CEO that we should hear the other party out, listen and respond with empathy and express and understanding of their disappointment, ending it there. I felt that if we did that well that we would be able to move past the conflict and get back to the more important part of the conversation which would be focusing on how we work together in the future.  Well, we made it, but not without a few moments of the people in the room. from both sides, feeling like they had to get in the last word and get the other side to somehow feel worse about the situation.  Which, I was there to diffuse and did.  And as Kurt Vonnegut writes, “So it goes”. It’s a typical business occurrence that we could resolve an argument or dispute so much quicker if we only were to finish the argument with patience and not have to feel that we must have the last word.

Yesterday, we taught the kids in our church’s Sunday School that “It’s not cool to lose your cool and end up looking like a fool”.  Patience is a God thing that when practiced, we reflect Him to others.  After my meeting this week one of the people said to me, “I was really impressed how you were so cool and calm in there”.  I didn’t have the chance to tell him why, but I will next time I see him.  You see, others are watching, wondering and sometimes more than quizzical than we know on how we can be different.  Let’s remember that ending an argument with patience could be more powerful than we think.

Reference: Proverbs 15:18 (New Living Translation)