Name: How Cynthia Marshall eliminated the Dallas Mavericks’ toxic culture in 100 days
Uploaded: 2023-01-23
Duration: 8 min 29 s
Description: Cynt Marshall tells her leadership story as the first Black female CEO of an NBA basketball team and why Mark Cuban hired her.

Cynt Marshall tells her leadership story as the first Black female CEO of an NBA basketball team and why Mark Cuban hired her.

How Cynthia Marshall eliminated the Dallas Mavericks’ toxic culture in 100 days

Leadership

How Cynt Marshall eliminated the Mavericks’ toxic culture

since I'm so happy to meet you and to introduce you to our viewers. Four years ago you became the first black woman to hold the Ceo job for any NBA team. You were hired to run the Dallas Mavericks and it was none other than Mark Cuban who recruited you himself to fix the team's toxic culture. You didn't know Mark, you knew very little about basketball. Why did you take the job? I took it because I just felt that I was uniquely qualified to help him out. He needed a culture change and that was the mandate transformed the culture. He needed a focus on diversity equity and inclusion. And two women stopped me after I met with him for almost an hour and just pleaded with me to take the job. And so I at first said I did it for the sisterhood. But actually I did it for the sisterhood and a brotherhood. Let me back up a little bit. Why did Mark Cuban come to you, You didn't know him, he didn't really know you correctly, but someone gave him my name. And so we think we know we I think it was somebody pretty high up at A T. And T. Because I had actually left the effort at A T and T to get a T. And T on fortune's 100 best places to work list when the scandal hit my name came up as somebody who they told Mark, we think this person can help you. She's still in Dallas. We don't know if she's moved yet. We think she started her own company. But give her a call. We think she's the person who can help you out. And I got that call and you did help him out. And what a job you took out because the Dallas math, I had a long terrible record on sexual harassment, domestic violence and a whole bunch of other workplace misconduct issues. But you clean things up and in 90 days, how did you do that? We put together a 100 day plan that had about 200 initiatives. Uh, four distinct pieces. The first part was about uh modeling zero tolerance. So setting up the infrastructure uh, for zero tolerance things will happen, but we won't tolerate it. Uh, so we focused on compliance. Speak up culture, all that. Uh, then our second piece was the Mavs women's agenda. We have a playbook to elevate empower and educate women. I didn't have any women in permanent leaders positions when I joined the Dallas Mavericks. So clearly we had to do something about that very quickly. And then we had cultural transformation initiatives. That's our diversity equity and inclusion agenda around our customers, our reputation uh community philanthropy suppliers, all that. And then just basic operational effectiveness, performance reviews, market based compensation, all that. So we have these 200 initiatives that everybody rallied around, I diversified my leadership team within those 100 days. So we're now 50% women, 50% people of color at my executive leadership team table, which I think had a lot to do with just setting the right tone and we all rallied around it and we executed on it. You make it sound seamless and you know, very straightforward. But when I'm thinking of a basketball team with all of these egos, There must have been so many people who were resisting this whole program. I mean, how did you break through? Actually we, most of the people wanted change. Most of the people wanted a great place to work. I had one on one meetings with every single employee and I got to know them. And then I also got to know the people who needed to leave. I mean, some of the leaders needed to, uh, they needed to be walked to the door. I did have someone who told his team not to embrace the 100 day plan Because I would be gone in 90 days because it was just a pr stunt and I didn't know basketball and all that. Uh, and so we, we had to deal with that. That person is no longer with the mass. Uh, and then his team started to embrace. They wanted to embrace it, which is what I, you know, that's how I heard about it. They wanted a change. These people deserved a great place to work. You had a very successful career. You're 37 years at a T and T where you were chief diversity officer. So you probably knew everything. There was about leadership. But is there any way that this experience with the Dallas Mavericks stretched you as a leader and as a coach? Well, it actually did because I didn't know the business of basketball. I was a big basketball fan, but I didn't know the business of basketball that was different for me to be in an environment where I just I didn't know the subject matter at all and had to lead the people and and just rely on their expertise. But it showed me that I really good that I could trust people, I could trust their expertise. I didn't have to know at all, which I was used to, you know, knowing the subject matter and and it just showed me what great people we really do have. Your story is all the more amazing because you had a tough childhood, you had an abusive and violent father, you grew up in the housing projects of California, but you managed to somehow break away from all that. You got a college scholarship to Berkeley first job was a T and T. We know what happened there and climbing the corporate ladder. You write in your book, the chosen that you spent your life beating the odds. But it sounds like it was so much more than that, who mentored you, Who inspired you, my mother, my my totally inspired me and I tell people because of my mother, I actually think I had a good childhood. I had some bad things that happened, obviously some bad things that happened in my childhood, but my mother, she went to great extremes to make sure that we got a good education to make sure that we were involved in activities to make sure that we got a good foundation uh in scripture. I always joke about my mother putting two books in my hand and early age, a math book in one hand and a bible in the other and told me to keep my head in these two books and I would make it out and I guess that was out of poverty. Uh so I just credit my mother was giving me a really, really good foundation and keeping me very focused and giving me these four words to live by dream focus, pray and act what did it take for you to feel confident and comfortable with who you were in your whole background as you entered into this new phase of your career when I started, you know working at first of course I had situations where I had bosses to tell me to you know, take off my red shoes, take off my braids. I had braids when I first started working for a T and T and I had a boss told me to take them down because it was too ethnic and and it was she was well intentioned, she wanted me to look a certain part like other people looked and all that. But it finally got to a point, you know, like 1920 years in my career where I just I said I had to be me. It's too exhausting being someone else. And fortunately I had bosses, I had people like a Randall Stephenson and Ed Whittaker, I had people in my life of chuck smith, these mentors of mine, mostly men who made it ok for me to be me. How do you use this your life story as you mentor young men and women today, I share all of its authenticity is very big for me. That's one of my personal val, it's one of our values at the map. So our hashtag is do you uh so if I'm going to tell somebody they need to be themselves, is too exhausting being somebody else. Your employer wants, you, you have to bring your best self to work. I have to give them my best self. And I have to model that, and I try to model that by letting people know who I am when they first meet me. So if you have to summarize it, what type of leadership does it take to transform a culture? Oh, I love that question. I call it all in leadership. Leading with intent, leading with insight. Leading with inclusion and leading with inspiration. And so I do this speech called leading with heart and I talk about all of those areas and how you have to be very intentional about changing the culture. You have to have a plan. You have to be insightful about the difference between diversity and inclusion and equity and equality, insightful about who really is in your workplace and how do you serve them? You have to be very inclusive, not just focus on diversity but inclusion, making sure that you set up a culture where people really feel as if they belong, where you're really teaching people the rules and what to do uh in the environment, and then just being very inspirational, knowing what inspires you, and then bringing that into the workplace to keep the folks inspired to do better.