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 3K168: Living Up To Expectations

purposed worKING No Comments

“True humility and fear of the Lord lead to riches, honor, and long life.”

I was watching the ESPYs (ESPN’s Annual Sports Awards) last week and Joe Buck (long time announcer for Fox and now ESPN) presented the annual Muhammad Ali award for Humanitarian Service to Albert Pujols (Major League Baseball Player).  Before he presented the award he went off script and made this statement (which I rewound to be sure I got it right): “Few people that when you get to meet them, are even better than you hope they are.”  Wow, is that true.  We all have people who we look up to because of their position, authority, talent, reputation, etc.  But, when you finally meet them, are they all that you thought they were going to be?  That’s the problem with “hero worship”.  We think we know what they are going to be like because we project on them what we desire and expect.  I write about this because more than once I have seen those who are in the workplace get exposed to senior executives for the first time and walk away being less impressed than the executive thinks they will/should be.  What this says is that if we are a leader, we need to approach our roles with the greatest of humility and servant attitude. Because, if we can’t live up to the hype, we can certainly live up to being in the service of others.

We can overcome so much in the expectations of us if we only live our lives in humility.  Jesus modeled it for us, so there is no reason we shouldn’t be striving to conduct our business and personal lives with extreme humility.  Others will notice and others will follow.  And when asked how we remain such, it’s our chance to describe the One we follow. BTW, if you go back and watch Albert Pujols acceptance speech, you will see how he modeled this out as an example to follow.

Reference: Proverbs 22:24 (New Living Translation)