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 2656: And, The Arguing, Oh My…

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“Do everything without complaining and arguing, so that no one can criticize you.”

And then there is arguing.  It starts with complaining and then spreads to arguing. Arguing has almost become sport-like these days. We enter into them as if we are gladiators, readying to slay.  And, for the smallest of reasons that in most cases, we personally have no control over.  Sometimes, it is like we can’t help ourselves and we find ourselves in the midst of an argument that later we can’t even remember what we were arguing about. I fear that in these days of technology enabled anonymity and shielding that we are rewiring our brains to lead with the argument first and listening and reasoning, second. It is a good place to do a self-evaluation of the past week.  How many times did we enter an argument (big or small….online or live) and to what purposes did the argument serve?  And then, what could we have done differently to have avoided or controlled ourselves to not have entered the fray?

Arguing is not a God trait.  If it was, then Paul would have not said we shouldn’t do it. Let’s consider the source on this one.  Paul was no wallflower.  He was more than the opposite.  He took and gave it hard in life, but if he was considered by others to be a “complainer” or an “argue” then his words in the letter to the Philippians would have come across as hypocritical, which as we know they didn’t. So, Paul figured out how to have a strong POV without being a complainer or an arguer.  Wow.  That rocks me when I think how skilled and deft he must have been and inspires me to be better. I hope it does you too!

Reference: Philippians 2:14 (New Living Translation)