Like Argent, Tiffany Dufu is no stranger to the value of Work Friends. But for the entrepreneur, she calls her own circle of inspiring, supportive, goal-oriented peers her crew and has committed herself to help others find theirs. Dufu is the founder of The Cru, a company that connects women with groups of peers while fostering community and accountability to help them realize their goals—work-related or otherwise.
Prior to The Cru’s launch in 2018, Dufu held roles at the now-shuttered The White House Project and Levo. She’s raised massive funding for nonprofit organizations and has trained women to run for political office. She’s also authored the book Drop the Ball: Achieving More by Doing Less, a title which could strike you as surprising given the impressive list of accomplishments she’s had. But in our Office Hours with Dufu, she shares more insight not solely on “doing less,” but working with intentionality, with truthfulness to yourself and your priorities, and with the support of a crew. Not sure you have a crew of your own? Well, that’s where The Cru comes in, and below, Dufu offers plenty of other advice for where to look, as well.
HOW DID YOU COME TO LAUNCH THE CRU?
“Before I started The Cru I already had embarked on a portfolio career, meaning that I had already gotten clear about how I might be able to monetize my gifts, passions, skills, and abilities in a way that didn’t tie me to just one thing, one employer. I launched a public speaking practice. I wrote Drop the Ball. I was already thinking about the diverse ways that I could respond to women’s needs.
“At that time, I already had a crew, a group of peer mentors that have supported me over the last 13-14 years. And in my conversations with women, I would tell them about my crew. Then, in January 2018, I had an experience that was catalyzing for me. A woman I was giving my pep talk to about how she needed to find her crew really was not feeling me. I said, ‘Is everything okay?’ And she said, ‘No. I understand theoretically what you’re talking about when you describe this group of peer mentors who can support you, but I don't think you appreciate the amount of work that goes into finding such a group of people.’ And then she walked me through the workflow of her needing to figure out how she was going to get into the cocktail party, conference, or event in order to network. Then there’s scheduling coffees, teas, and lunches when most women are working during the middle of the day. She said, ‘What you’re describing to me is just more work and I don’t have the bandwidth.’
“That, to me, was the white space. That was my—I call them—Tiffany Epiphanies. I realized if my life’s work is advancing women and girls I should probably stop preaching to them about how to find a crew and just find a crew for them.”
SO, WHETHER YOU’RE A MEMBER OF THE CRU OR NOT, WHAT QUALITIES MAKE A STRONG CREW?
“I think it's important you consider three things. One is diversity. Most of us at this point understand the value of diversity in the workplace and innovating solutions for organizations and companies, but we don’t really think about the value of diversity in our own personal and professional journeys. And I think having a dedicated group of people who are coming from diverse perspectives and different backgrounds is essential as we curate our next moves in our personal and professional lives.
“The second is peer mentorship. It's really difficult and kind of complicated for our friends and family to be true crew members by my definition. A really great crew is a group of people that are not invested in your decision-making. They care about you, but the decisions that you make don’t necessarily have an impact on them the way they do on the people who love you.
“And then the last component of a crew is that it's a group that is truly rooted in and all about accountability. If you have a group of people you’re really excited about catching up with and having drinks, that’s beautiful. But what you want is to have a little tiny feeling of dread when you’re meeting your crew because you know that they’re going to ask you about something that you committed to doing the last time you saw them. That’s a group of people that is very helpful to have in your life because they’re holding your feet to the fire. We don’t grow within our comfort zone, and so having a group of people who are holding you accountable means holding space for you to be in your discomfort and for you to grow and learn.”
WHAT CHANGE AND SUCCESS ARE YOU SEEING AFTER HELPING SO MANY WOMEN CONNECT WITH THEIR ACCOUNTABILITY CREWS AT THE CRU?
“The most common one that’s measurable is we can see women realizing their goals—we call them ‘intentions’. We have one member that had been working for almost a decade on finishing her Ph.D. We’ve had another who always wanted to buy a home and she was able to save up, figure out the entire process, and was actually the first person in her family to be approved for a home loan. We’ve had lots of people who have made career transitions, who have met health goals around their physical fitness, and lots of intentions realized around entrepreneurship.”
"We don’t grow within our comfort zone, and so having a group of people who are holding you accountable means holding space for you to be in your discomfort and for you to grow and learn.”
WHAT CHANGE AND SUCCESS ARE YOU SEEING AFTER HELPING SO MANY WOMEN CONNECT WITH THEIR ACCOUNTABILITY CREWS AT THE CRU?
“The most common one that’s measurable is we can see women realizing their goals—we call them ‘intentions’. We have one member that had been working for almost a decade on finishing her Ph.D. We’ve had another who always wanted to buy a home and she was able to save up, figure out the entire process, and was actually the first person in her family to be approved for a home loan. We’ve had lots of people who have made career transitions, who have met health goals around their physical fitness, and lots of intentions realized around entrepreneurship.”
WHAT ARE SOME ACTIONS PEOPLE CAN TAKE TODAY IF THEY WORRY THAT THEY DON’T HAVE THAT KIND OF CREW, EVEN IF THEY’RE ALREADY WELL ADVANCED IN THEIR CAREERS?
“Well, first of all, it's never too late. You’ve probably been doing some really amazing things in your life that you’ve been tied up with. Certainly, The Cru is here for you, but I am also loving connecting through LinkedIn these days. Look through all of your old jobs. Was there anybody there that you really valued? I encourage you to reach out. Many of us also have alumni networks that we don’t tap into. There are so many opportunities for us to support one another but you do have to, one, have some clarity about who you might want in your crew and, two, have the courage and the willingness to ask for what you need and to be as specific as possible. The universe will provide, it just tends to favor those who ask for help.”
GOING BACK TO YOUR BOOK, DROP THE BALL, IN IT YOU SPOKE ABOUT LETTING GO OF THE PURSUIT OF PERFECTIONISM. HOW HAS CHANGE IMPACTED YOUR CAREER SINCE?
"I wrote a book called Drop The Ball because I was a person who used to be terrified of ever dropping a ball. What happened to me was not that I developed some amazing strategy for turning this around. What happened was I had a life-changing event in which all the balls came crashing to the floor. For me, it was the birth of my first child. But I’ve spoken to hundreds of women and it could be a promotion, a diagnosis, a viral pandemic, or an economic recession. My ‘Tiffany’s epiphany’ was that when I had my drop-the-ball moment, Armageddon never really hit. Everything I was always terrified would happen if I ever dropped a ball did not manifest. So I started to question why I felt so much pressure and took myself through a journey, like a three-year journey, and wrote the book hoping that it would not take anybody else that long to try to get at the heart of why I felt the pressure and how I could alleviate it.”
AND HOW DID YOU GO ABOUT THAT?
“I had to figure out what mattered most to me, which I encourage all of us to do, separate and apart from what matters to the people who raised you, advertisers, whoever else is imposing expectations. What should you be focused on instead of just saying yes to everything? How do you meaningfully engage other people in your life? How do you figure out how to ask for help when something is really hard to do? For me, being able to do those three things has been the difference between me being overwhelmed, feeling a lot of anxiety, feeling that I’m not doing enough, to me being able to execute on my passion and purpose and really unleash my creativity and my skill set in a powerful way.”
NEARLY A DECADE LATER, DO YOU STILL CONSIDER THAT YOUR BEST PIECE OF ADVICE: THAT, AS AMBITIOUS AS THE WOMEN WHO COME TO THE CRU ARE, LETTING GO A BIT IS SOMETIMES THE BEST WAY TO MOVE FORWARD?
“It’s giving yourself some grace and it’s you deciding what matters most to you. It's not just letting go of other people’s expectations but getting clear about what you expect of yourself, what success means to you so that you’re not chasing someone else’s dream.”
Drop the Ball: Achieving More by Doing Less is available wherever books are sold.
Illustrations by Bijou Karman
