Tiffany Dufu, Sona Chawla & Michelle Gass Go Offline

Kohl’s associates take career advice from three amazing professionals

Tiffany Dufu encourages Kohl's associates to drop the ball

What happens when you take two of Kohl’s top executives and add in a catalyst at large in the world of women’s leadership? An inspiring conversation about career, leadership and letting go.

As part of Kohl’s “Offline: A Conversation With…” speaker series, Sona Chawla, chief operating officer, and Michelle Gass, chief merchandising and customer officer, began the day speaking to associates about their career paths. They discussed the mentors who helped them get to where they are today and also shared stories about how they developed their leadership styles.

If that wasn’t enough to empower associates to take their careers in their own hands, Tiffany Dufu, author of Drop the Ball and Chief Leadership Officer at Levo, one of the fastest growing millennial professional networks, came on to share her story and her biggest life lesson: letting go. Once the poster girl for doing it all, after she had her first child, Tiffany struggled to accomplish everything she thought she needed in order to succeed. She began to feel that achieving her career and personal goals was an impossibility.

Tiffany shared how she learned to re-evaluate expectations, shrink her to-do list and meaningfully engage the assistance of others. She urges everyone to embrace imperfection, to expect less of themselves and more from others and to devote the necessary energy to achieving goals. Once this happens, the pressure to do it all to have it all evaporates and what’s left is a rich, rewarding life we all desire.

To keep the inspiration going, some lucky associates chosen at random who attended the event received a copy of Tiffany’s book Drop the Ball. We can bet their reading list just got a little more empowered.