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 3K204: Bad Pillars

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“In everything you do, stay away from complaining and arguing, so that no one can speak a word of blame against you. You are to live clean, innocent lives as children of God in a dark world full of crooked and perverse people.”

A long time ago I wrote a post called “Stop The Complaining!”. That post resonated with a number of people as they said to me that being a complainer at work is one of the easiest roles to slip into. I then wrote another post called, “The Last Word” that talked about the arguers at work and how we should avoid arguing all together and not fall into the traps of people who like to pick a fight and suck us into email arguments, etc. After thinking about these two topics more it dawned on me that complaining and arguing are like the evil twins of the workplace. They are the bad pillars that some people have built their work persona around. We all know them and can’t say that we love ’em. They are the first person to have the negative point of view and no matter what they will fine something to complain about. I once worked with a person who was always looking for why he was not included or involved so everyone would go out of their way to include him in meetings and conversations that he didn’t really need to be included. After all of this effort one day he complained to the group that he was too busy being in meetings to get anything done. I thought the rest of the room was going to reach across the table and strangle him when he said that. And when he wasn’t complaining he was arguing. They go hand in hand as two tools that people use to build themselves up and tear down other people.

As believers and people who are committed to working God’s purpose in our jobs, we cannot be one of those people. We must take the high road that God shows us and not fall into the trap of being a complainer or an arguer. Paul says it to us in Philippians 2:14-15 and he also tells us that those who are complainers and arguers are trying to pull us down; “In everything you do, stay away from complaining and arguing, so that no one can speak a word of blame against you. You are to live clean, innocent lives as children of God in a dark world full of crooked and perverse people.” He then goes on to say that if we can rise about the rest of the ways of the world that we should, “Let your lives shine brightly before them”. You won’t win any awards or get a lot or recognition from not falling into the trap of becoming a complainer or an arguer, but you can know that you will work without blame and that God’s light can shine through you onto others. Those are two great positives to eradicate the double whammy’s of complaining and arguing.

Reference: Philippians 2:14-15 (New Living Translation)