Cynt Marshall, Chief Executive Officer, Dallas Mavericks
Interviewer: Maria Aspan, FORTUNE

Most Powerful Women 2022 - Being Cynt: Leading From The Heart

Being Cynt: Leading From The Heart

turning around toxic workplace culture is no easy task doing it at an organization with a reputation of being a real life animal house that's next level. The Dallas Mavericks were in a heap of trouble facing scathing allegations of sexual harassment and workplace misconduct. Mavs owner Mark Cuban tapped her next leader for help ST martial. She's been called a trail blazer, a dynamic force. And as a woman of many firsts that includes becoming the first black woman to hold the position of Ceo in the history of the NBA. And she's just authored her first book. Her memoir titled, You've been chosen thriving through the unexpected. Perfectly fitting for a conversation. Sin joins fortunes, Maria aspen to talk about transformation, facing challenges and building success through transparency, trust and values based leadership. Please welcome saint and Maria to stage, I'm not playing. I cannot compete with a shoe game. You know, there's a story there. I do. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so good to be here. So good to be back. Y'all having a good time. Me, I'm having a ball. Well, let's start with the shoes because I read your book on the plane, you've been chosen. Um, made me laugh, made me gas, made me cry. And you tell a story in there about how at one point at a T and T. When offered a promotion, you were told not to wear red shoes. Yes. What? That's what I said. Well, yes, when I first, when I got my officer promotion, um, it was a big promotion. So I was all excited about it. And so as I'm accepting the promotion, my boss said okay so let me give you some advice. Uh I need you to stop uh you know saying words like blessed, so say lucky I need you to change your hair. She left them at on my desk uh that she wanted me to start wearing white, changed my hair. I mean she just had a laundry list of things. Uh she wanted me to cut my hair, my husband is in the background saying just I have a barber, don't worry about it like this is good. And I said uh and I thought about 19 years prior, my first week in the company when my boss Um and it's well intentioned so don't get me wrong, she was well intentioned uh told me to take off my red shoes and get rid of my braids. I was 21 years old and I did it because you know I was getting what I thought was good advice and she wanted me to be appropriate for the culture. She said it was too ethnic. I went home, I stayed up all night with my sister and my mom and we took the braids out and I came back to work looking like she told me to look. So here it is 19 years later I'm getting the same kind of advice and I turned down the officer promotion. I said uh at some point I got to do me, you don't get, you don't coaching is one thing. But to fundamentally change who I am. And so I already had a great job. I turned it down and then a few minutes later the chairman of the company called and he said sent because she told me to change my name because nobody knows what scent is. I had to be Cindy and I said no, I'm sent and he said sent and he started all over and told me it was okay to be me. I could wear what I wanted to wear. Just keep producing. And so now it's my statement. Usually when I go out, I have some red or pink well and the color is also a statement. Yes, it is because it is breast cancer awareness month. And so we have all been impacted by it. I have a sister, uh sister in law who is a four time breast cancer survivor and still fighting it. And so I just wanted to wear pink just in honor of breast cancer. As you know, I'm a colon cancer survivor. And just wanted to send a message to all of us women. Let's take care of our health. I think we all need to have PMS physical, mental and spiritual health. There's another story in your book that made me so angry when you were diagnosed with colon cancer. Well no, I'm sorry when you had your scan that turned up cancerous and the doctor wanted to delay the surgery to remove the tumor and you had to really sit in his office and advocate for him to schedule surgery. Just how did you find the wherewithal to just advocate for yourself for the thing that he later admitted to you would have cost you your life. I just had to I didn't have a choice after I got that colonoscopy. And it was my fault that I delayed the colonoscopy. So I literally meet people now and they tell me their age I'm like, have you had a colonoscopy and everything? What is wrong with this woman? So I delayed it. And so literally my last day of 50 I had a colonoscopy and on my 51st birthday, I got a call from my gastroenterologist and get to a surgeon. When I got to the surgeon surgeon, he looked at the scan and he said, I've seen tumors like this before. You're okay. Don't delay your holiday plans. We can put this off a couple of months. And something just told me we couldn't. And so I wouldn't leave his office. And so for an hour and a half, I just kept saying, no, it's friday. And I'm having surgery on monday. And so he finally looked at my husband and he said, is she going to leave? My husband said she's not going to leave. So the doctor gave me two of his library and all that I came back, I said it's a beautiful library when his surgery. And so somehow after an hour and a half, he found a hospital, which was right up the street from my house, uh to do the surgery. And uh even after the surgery, he said, don't worry about the pathology report. Um, I'm sure it's not cancer. And and he was just, he was going by his professional opinion. I mean just based on, you know, his 22 five years of what he, you know what he saw in tumors. But I just felt like I needed to advocate for myself and not let it go. I looked at that. Um, I looked at the results and it just looked ugly and I said I wanted out, I wanted out. And so I'm glad I got it out. When he called me the day before New Year's Eve. He said, I hope you're sitting down. I have some news, It's bad and it's significant. And I was actually on the phone working over the holidays with one of my lobbyist trying to lay out our legislative agenda in north Carolina. And he said you have stage three colon cancer one left note away from Stage four. And it was the first time in my life. And actually the only time that it was just an out of body experience because you know, I'm this hard working woman probably had ignored all the signs and I did have signs. Somebody asked me a long time ago, did you ever have symptoms? And I said no, I don't think so. And then when I really thought about it, I did have signs and I was just working hard and take care of my business and raising my kids. And I just worked right through the signs. And so when he told me that, he said, you must hate me and I told him, I said actually I don't, you, you you've actually gone up and not in my book because for someone who was positive about me not having cancer, I mean, you knew you were convinced I didn't have it. But you still did your job. You biopsied everything you needed to biopsy. So You're okay. Let's let's let's do what we need to do. And so we did chemo and it was a pretty bad prognosis. And that was 11 years ago. I'm still here. That's why I'm so fired up all the time. I am living my best life. So I wanna maybe go back four years now. You get tired from A. T. And T. After almost 36 years, they're accomplishing so much breaking so many barriers. And uh Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks calls you asks you to come be the Ceo first black female ceo in the N. B. A. Except that, oh yes, the Mavericks have been in the news for having a terrible toxic culture of sexual harassment, domestic violence and he's asking you to come and fix it. What made you say? Yes. Well, first of all, when Mark Cuban called me, Okay, don't judge me. I didn't know Mark Cuban. Okay. I mean I didn't know him. And so I have started my own consulting company. I was on the phone with one of my clients and my phone kept going off my, my other cell phone and I have four kids. And so I and two of them are in college. I actually thought it was one of my kids uh texted me for money. And so I had, you know, because I'm a busy woman. So I'm like, don't try to call me, just text me what you need when you square it up later. So I gave my husband the phone and I said, one of the kids need money, take care of it. And he came back and said, uh, this dude doesn't need any money. And I said, what? He said, he said, Mark Cuban is trying to reach you. I said, who is that? I didn't know Mark Cuban. Right? So he's trying to tell me shark tank. I've never seen shark tank. So he tried to tell me all this. And he said just hang up the phone and call the man back. And so when I talked to Mark, he told me about a Sports illustrated article that just came out and all about sexual harassment. He wanted to see me at two o'clock and I said and my husband at this point is already looking at the maps colors. He's getting dressed. He's like, we're going to see this guy. And so I told him, I said he wanted to see me at two o'clock. I said I can't come and see you. I have a mammogram at two o'clock. He said, well you're going to meet you out there. No, I don't need you to come to the mammogram. Uh I said I'll try to get to you by 4:00. So by the time I got when I got back my husband was all dressed in matching colors and all that. And so we got to mark and by the time I got that Maria, I had decided I wasn't going to do it. I said I am not, I'm sorry my glasses are fogging up. I said I am not going to work in this culture. What woman in her right mind wants to work here. I said I already have a brand. I spent 36 years building this brand. I kind of don't want to be associated with this. I'm not going to do it. My husband's like just talk to him. Okay, so we walk in. I spent an hour with mark and on my way for 55 minutes and on my way out of and he was very he was very honest about what was going on, everything that was happening. It was horrific. And so on my way out of his office to women stopped me and they said, are you the person who mark who mark human said is gonna come and save us? And I said no I can't come and save you. And they said no we need you. And they started telling me their stories. And the more these women talked to me, the more I thought about a blog that I had posted that morning called Impact and it was about what impact was I going to have next in my life? And then one of them said the magic words, she said we think you could really come and impact the situation. And then I thought about the work that I did at a T and T. That landed us unfortunate great 100 best places to work list for the first time in the history of our company. I thought about that work that I had done a year prior and I thought okay maybe I am uniquely qualified to come and help out. Said I'd go home and pray about it. The next day I came in all of these people for three hours had me in the conference room telling me their stories. And I thought you know what, I gotta do this for the sisterhood. Now the brotherhood will benefit. But I gotta do this for the sisterhood. These women deserve a great place to work. And so that's why I said yes because I wanted to give them a great place to work And how did you do that? four years later, four years later, what I did, I came in and I laid out a vision that said, we would set the global standard in the NBA for diversity, equity and inclusion. I laid out a set of values that spill crafts, character, respect, authenticity, fairness, teamwork and safety, both physical and emotional safety. We put together, I laid out a 100 day plan that had four major parts model zero tolerance. So put that whole infrastructure in place around compliance and all of that, a mavs women's agenda and expressed agenda to educate empower and elevate women. When I got to the mavs, we had 10 white men running the Dallas Mavericks. So my first meeting, there were 10 white men and then they brought in two women who were not in leadership to try to take me out. So I would think I would think they were at the table, but I knew better. And so so I want to express agenda to, to lift women uh, and then all of our cultural transformation, deny stuff and then just basic operational effectiveness, Just market based compensation address gender pay equity and all of that. Within 90 days of laying out this vision the values the 100 day plan, I diversified my leadership team. Within 90 days we went from 10 white men running the Dallas Mavericks to 50% women and 50% people of color. And that's throughout the entire organization. So we focused a lot on bringing women to the table. Our workplace promises every voice matters and everybody belongs. And I told them this promise and these values would operate in the halls, not just on the walls. And so we laid out our plan we executed on it and we were bold about it. We were very intentional. I call it all in leadership being intentional, uh inclusive, insightful and inspirational. And so that's what we did. And at my age and my brand, I wasn't afraid of it. I said we are going to put these sisters in charge and we're going to handle our business. And for the last two years we have won the NBA's inclusion leadership award. We've handled our business. Congratulations. Thank you. Unfortunately. We still see some similar issues popping up at other organizations, including in the N. B. A. How do we get to a point where that doesn't happen anymore? Well, I think human behavior is what it is, but I think we have to really practice zero tolerance. There's some things we can't stop from happening, but we can definitely respond to it and send some very powerful messages. Um, I know what the mavs, we have values based employment. Uh, you can't work here if you don't comport with our values. I think we also need to have more women at the table. Uh, there's a lot more women at the table and I think we have to be very intentional about who we hire and what kind of behavior we will tolerate because some of this stuff is not new. Some of these people have done this in the past. And so we have to be very intentional about who we hire, but especially about how we respond to it since they can't cover it up. No. Um, the title of this book is you've been chosen and sent. I have to say. We all feel very fortunate to be chosen by you today. Thank you. Thank you. Oh.