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 637: Understand?

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“A truly wise person uses few words; a person with understanding is even-tempered.”

We speak. We listen. Others speak. Others listen. But when way too many conversations are over there wasn’t a lot of hearing going on and worse, no understanding occurred. To understand is to allow oneself to have some empathy, to consider another person’s feelings, and to give a little of our own point of view to get to a common place. When we hear without these things then we never reach a true level of understanding. And that is why it so often happens that we can all sit in a room, hear the same words and walk out with different understandings. If we could calculate the amount of time and energy that is put out in corporate America in trying to find clarity and understanding, after we thought it was already achieved, the productivity numbers would skyrocket. It’s a simple but hard thing to achieve. So, how to be better at gaining understanding? Don’t be afraid to ask the follow up question. Don’t hold back on asking someone else to repeat back to you their understanding of a situation. And don’t be impatient to taking a few more minutes to assure that everyone is on the same page before they leave the room. By the way, shared understanding the first time around is a real morale booster in a company. If the culture is one where people understand each other all the time, then that bodes well for it being a place where people will want to work.

To get to being an understanding person is to be as Solomon says, “even-tempered”. This makes sense to me. If we are ones to get bothered easily, have a short-fuse, or fly off at the handle, then we certainly are not ones who will take the time to listen to the whole story or to hear out both sides of an argument. Being even-tempered is to be the type of person that others want to be around and who others will bring their challenges and problems. Being even-tempered can create an aura of calm, cool and collected, which will lead to many a question as to why we don’t let our feathers get ruffled. That question is the perfect time to let the other person know that there are other things that are more important than the moment at hand. It is this moment that we can share the larger picture and the faith that we have. It may not always work out that way, but I do know that if we are the type of people who others tip-toe around there won’t be many questions on how we got that way that will allow for our faith to be the good reason. Understand?

Reference: Proverbs 17:27 (New Living Testament)