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 421: Accolades

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I’ve had the opportunity to attend live awards shows and of course like most Americans, have seen more than my share on television. They are all the same with the nominated people all nervously awaiting their award announcement. And then only one wins and he/she will take the stage and either be really humble and gracious in their acceptance speech or leave the stage with everyone thinking that they were really full of themselves. It’s a tried and true formula for the ages. While we don’t usually have formal awards programs at work, although some companies do, in some ways every day is an awards show in the office. Staff meetings are filled with jockeying for attention, presentations are made without consideration of others who worked hard to make the presentation come together, deals are closed with one sales person getting the accolades while many worked on the account. There is no changing this aspect of work, but there is something that can be done in how we accept and receive the accolades when they come our way. In Proverbs we are told to never be the ones who boast of our own accord; “Let someone else praise you, not your own mouth – a stranger, not your own lips.” This means that we are not to seek out the praise. We are to not self-promote and we are certainly not to brag, boast or create accolades towards ourselves. This is all to be left up to someone else, without us politicking or putting the words in someone elses mouth. This is many times a subtle but important point in how we are to be seen as examples of how Christ lived. He was the last one seeking out accolades and in fact went out of His way to ensure the attention went to His heavenly Father, not to Him. Today, can we try to be a little bit less about ourselves and more about how He modeled for us to live? When the unsolicited accolades come our way, it’s great. But how we react, accept and ensure that the credit goes to those who deserve it, will say way more about who we are than the praise itself. May the accolades we all receive be the best of all, that others see us as ones who can receive but never act as though we deserve.

Reference: Proverbs 27:2 (New Living Testament)