YouSaid · the spoken record

Cynt Marshall

lines on the record: 24
first: 2020-10-10
most recent: 2020-10-10
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Sure, hope so. Oh my goodness, but I think a lot of that has to do with just what's happening, obviously, in our country. And so we need the vaccine. We need to wear our mask. We need to wash our hands, keep our distance, all that. But I'm optimistic. I'm an optimistic person, if you can't tell. And so I think we will slowly work our way back. But I will tell you, the NBA is totally focused on safety, which is why we ended up in the bubble. Safety. First, I mean, safety first. And so once it's deemed safe, we'll be back in there. And so we're making plans. We hope we have a full arena. It may not start out full. We don't know exactly when we're going to start, but I'm optimistic. I'm optimistic. I see a day out there when we'll all get back and we can't wait.”
2020-10-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Cynt Marshall of Dallas Mavericks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then that Monday, my leadership team called turned into a whole conversation around race. Then our entire weekly huddle, because we have all these kind of touch points for a solid week, all of them were around what was happening with social justice. Just like previously, we were talking about COVID. And so you just have to respond. But it's because employees were saying, here's the agenda item. Here's what I want to talk about. And so we responded to that. And then that led to a big community conversation. So you just got to put it out there. Here's the agenda item. And hopefully there are ways to do that. It's direct phone calls. It's through hotlines. It's through sending somebody an email. Leaders have to respond to that, especially when it's coming in mass, when a lot of people are saying we're going to talk about this.”
2020-10-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Cynt Marshall of Dallas Mavericks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Depending on the size of the company. So if you have employee resource groups or affinity groups, usually those leaders of those groups will pull people together and pull the business together to have those conversations. But even if you don't have them, I think somebody has to be bold enough to step up and to talk to their leaders if they're not doing it. I mean, hopefully you have leaders who are. But if they're not doing it, somebody has to say we need to talk about this. And I played that role years ago. Somebody has to step up and do it because there's no way we can have a double pandemic going on. And we truly have a double pandemic. We've got COVID-19 and then we've got the issue of social justice. So we've got two pandemics going on in this country right now. And we need to be talking about both of them. I mean, when the George Floyd thing happened, some of our African American men said somebody call sent. We need to talk like today. And so we talked for three hours that Friday night.”
2020-10-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Cynt Marshall of Dallas Mavericks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, give me a credit into next season and let's see what happens or we'll donate it to we were doing a lot in the community. I mean, we pivoted, so we did a lot in the community. And so they wanted to be a part of that because this Dallas region is amazing in terms of just being there for the community. And so a lot of people wanted to partner with us on that. So knock on wood, yes, it is challenging financially, but it could be much, much, much worse.”
2020-10-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Cynt Marshall of Dallas Mavericks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, not 100%. So we're trying to be creative. We did some things in the bubble with our sponsors. And the big thing was trying to figure out how to make sure that our sponsors are still visible. So we had some, you know, the online signage on the court. So it's a challenge. Online merchandising has increased. We have to pivot quickly. We gave away a lot of masks and a lot of, you know, PPE, but we also started selling some things. So just really trying to figure out how do we meet the community's needs, but also figure out a way to make some money in the process. So online merch has really, really gone up for us. But you're right. I mean, we had eight home games that we missed at the end of the season because we shut down. And so we had to fortunately for us, most of our fans didn't ask for a refund. Most of them said either care.”
2020-10-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Cynt Marshall of Dallas Mavericks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I manage the business side of it. So ticket sales operations serving our fans, making sure that we have a full house in the arena when we play at home are the marketing, brand identity, sponsorships. So three of us report to Mark Cuban. So I have the business side. Rick Carlisle is our head coach, and Donnie Nelson is the general manager, all the scouting and all of that. So I don't scout. I don't coach. I handle the business side.”
2020-10-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Cynt Marshall of Dallas Mavericks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, well, I will tell you, it's wonderful working for him. He is, I love the fact that he is vocal. He's bold. He's courageous because I'm all of those things too. So I like having a boss like that. And so I'm blessed. But he's one of those bosses where he makes you feel like you're the only person in the room or the only person on the phone because he'll give you 100% of his attention. I love that as busy as he is. And I can run all kinds of things by him. I do have the decision making power on the business side. I mean, I make my own personnel moves. I make the decisions. And at the end of the day, he'll say sin is your call. I mean, that's what his favorite line is your call. But he is involved. I mean, he's involved from the standpoint of being there as kind of my coach and my mentor. I'm learning the business of basketball, which is great. And he claims that he's learning some things from me about leading people and diversity and inclusion and all that.”
2020-10-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Cynt Marshall of Dallas Mavericks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To address, and some of these issues are 400 years old. And so I think we're all holding ourselves at each other accountable. I know that's what we're trying to do here in Dallas and at the MAFS.”
2020-10-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Cynt Marshall of Dallas Mavericks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Important to our communities. Who understands what's happening in the country, who understands the community? And I know you have a lot of situations where people just have differences, and that's okay. It's okay to have differences. We've had some season ticket holders who have called and asked for a refund because of our stand on some issues. And I like to talk to them. I like to have the conversation because this is about, we had a courageous conversation on June 9th. We said we are normal conveners. We unify people as a basketball team. We bring people out. So we're going to have the socially distant, courageous conversation. We're going to talk about the reactions to the George Floyd situation. We're going to talk about biases and stereotypes and all that. Our theme was listen, learn unite because that's what it's about. Listening to each other, learning our stories, learning what people are going through, and then uniting around an action plan to move this country forward because we still have some issues.”
2020-10-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Cynt Marshall of Dallas Mavericks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Here's what I'll say to that, and obviously, I can talk about the Mavs, I can talk about what's happened with the NBA. We're playing in the bubble with a court that says Black Lives Matter. Okay, because our players decided that they wanted to be able to speak out. They're not in their home market, so they're not able to do some of the things they would normally do when you have this kind of situation like we've been in post-George Floyd public lynching. And so for the players to say, we want to take a stand. We want to have something on our jerseys. We want to speak out on this. I mean, they're grown men. They're able to do that. But it's not just the players. I mean, it's all of us. I mean, at the Mavs, we launched something called Mavs Take Action. It's our own plan to address racial inequities, promote social change, look at some of the injustices. And what I always say is we don't just work here. We don't just play here. We live here too. And the things...”
2020-10-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Cynt Marshall of Dallas Mavericks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so on the authenticity piece, our hashtag is do you. I want the person who gets up out of bed in the morning, all the issues they have, the backgrounds they have, the stories they have, the perspectives they have. That's what I want to walk into our workplace every day. You don't have to leave yourself at home. You don't have to leave your story at home. You don't have to park it in the parking lot. That's what makes us a great place to work, to have all of those backgrounds and cultures and perspectives working. And I've been in a situation where I was asked not to be who I am. And so I've lived those days. And I don't like that. I don't like that. The person who gets up out of bed in the morning needs to be the person who walks into the building and we as leaders need to meet people where they are.”
2020-10-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Cynt Marshall of Dallas Mavericks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It really does, and we all have a story. And you said it. I mean, it's about perspectives. We all bring different angles to things. We bring different perspectives. I mean, I don't know if you've ever seen the diagram where it's, depending on what side you're standing on, either you see a six when you're looking down on it or you see a nine. And the caption underneath says, it's not that I'm wrong and it's not that you're right. You just haven't seen life from my side. And so we need to know all those perspectives, and that's why we need to know people's stories. I always say one of our values is authenticity. So our values spell crafts. So it's character, respect, authenticity, fairness, teamwork, and safety, both physical and emotional safety.”
2020-10-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Cynt Marshall of Dallas Mavericks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We check it off. As an organization, we have to all agree that this particular item had been checked off. And so I remember one time I was getting ready to check off compensation and everybody started looking kind of weird. And I thought, what's going on around here? And I whispered over to my head of human resources and said, why is everybody looking kind of strange? She said, we haven't covered it yet. I said, oh, it's like they were calling me on it. Like, no, we're not checking this off because it's not done. And so I said, oops, I said, okay, guys, I guess this is premature. I guess it's premature, everybody. And so then they gave the feedback and gave everybody, you know, the information. And then we came back and had a ceremony and checked it off. And on the very last day, we checked it off. We left our building. We walked back in, uncovered all of our values, our new mission statement, all that had a little ceremony where everybody dipped their hands in paint and had this wall where we just basically said we're all in.”
2020-10-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Cynt Marshall of Dallas Mavericks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so I just asked the two women who I brought in with me. I told them one night, I said, you know what? I need to know if you're all in. Because I'm all in with these people. I love these people. And so after that, we started making some leadership changes and did what we needed to do. But it was all based on that 100-day plan. And every time we felt like we checked something big off, we would have a big kind of ceremony, a huddle, if you will.”
2020-10-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Cynt Marshall of Dallas Mavericks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I want to know your whole life story. So then they back up because usually they were surprised that I actually wanted to know their whole life story. Then they would give it to me. And then at the very end, after we had all of our conversation, the last question I would ask is, I said, where do you see yourself five years from now? And what was very clear to me, guys, and I mean, one night I just started crying because I realized I had all these people who set out to have a career in sports, not just jobs, but a career. And all of a sudden, I'm leading these people. And so my job is to make sure they get to have the careers in sports that they wanted to have just like the career in communications that I was able to have.”
2020-10-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Cynt Marshall of Dallas Mavericks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that's unfortunate because then you have a whole group of people who are also impacted who want to have the positive changes, but their leaders are saying don't get involved. But we address that. We address that. But you have to just keep going. I had one-on-ones with every single employee in the organization. I start out with the same question. I said, give me your whole life story. And so most of the time, they would start off with, oh, this is my fifth season at the Mavs, or this is my 10th season at the Mavs. And I'd say, okay, back up. Were you born here?”
2020-10-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Cynt Marshall of Dallas Mavericks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think the hardest part is to try to institutionalize a new culture while you're purging the old culture. Because keep in mind when I got there, there were, you know, there were people there who have been involved in some of the unfavorable activity. And so, I mean, I had one situation where somebody actually told their whole team, don't respond to her. Don't do anything she's asking to be done because she won't be here in 90 days.”
2020-10-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Cynt Marshall of Dallas Mavericks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sexual harassment, misconduct, and false allegations. I mean, all of it. We're just not going to tolerate it. And so that means that if some people need to go, then they need to go. The second piece was to develop a MAVs women's agenda, empowering women, elevating women. And then we laid out a whole culture transformation agenda. What needs to happen around here? What's our diversity and inclusion strategy?”
2020-10-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Cynt Marshall of Dallas Mavericks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was definitely supported by Mark. I mean, he wanted to see some changes. He did give me free reign to make the leadership changes that needed to be made. Some people didn't think that was going to happen. And he said, no, do what you need to do. I mean, obviously, we talked about the plan before I executed on it because I put together a 100-day plan. And it was a 100-day plan that had four main pieces to it. The first piece was to model zero tolerance, complete an investigation, and to really let people know that we have zero tolerance.”
2020-10-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Cynt Marshall of Dallas Mavericks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I know we're somewhere at the top. We actually ended up getting the MBA's Diversity and Inclusion Award in January for all of the work that we have done. So that was pretty special for us because we have a lot of people working very hard. I'm not just diversity because, you know, there is a difference. Diversity is about the mix. It's about race, gender, ethnicity, all of that. But inclusion is about the climate, the sense of belonging. It's about, you know, what do you do with that mix of people? And so we've been very focused on all of that, including equity, including equity, fairness, and all that. And so to have it recognized by the NBA was big for us, I mean, obviously we still have a lot of work to do. We'll always have a lot of work to do, but I think we've made some progress. It definitely looks different and feels different from March of 2018. According to what the folks are telling me.”
2020-10-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Cynt Marshall of Dallas Mavericks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Had to, had to. And so I had a recipe. So the first thing I did was set out a vision. And the vision just basically said the Dallas Mavericks would set the MBA standard for diversity and inclusion by 2019, meaning we had about nine months to do that. So that was the vision we set out because I know the business case for diversity and you have to have a diverse group of people around the table if you really want to be as successful as you can be. And then I had one-on-one with all the employees and then made some leadership changes. And so now we have almost 50% women in leadership and 47% people of color. And so diversity matters. It matters.”
2020-10-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Cynt Marshall of Dallas Mavericks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They did. They said, Are you the person who Mark Cuban said is going to come in and save us? I said, Well, first of all, I do not have the power or ability to save anybody. But yeah, we are talking about me coming in to help out. And they said you have to come. And they started telling me some things that were happening. And I said, well, you know, when I go home and pray about it, and, you know, maybe I'll come back tomorrow. And so I did go back the next day. And I was there for about three hours in a conference room with people just coming in and out talking to me. And Mark didn't even know I had come back. But just met some wonderful people who needed leadership. And that's what Mark wanted. That's what he asked for. And so I said yes”
2020-10-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Cynt Marshall of Dallas Mavericks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I need your help. I need your help. And so we talk for about almost an hour, and I still hadn't decided that I was going to do it. And then two women talked to me as I was leaving his office.”
2020-10-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Cynt Marshall of Dallas Mavericks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It is. I mean, I worked for ATT for 36 years. Then came to Dallas to do culture transformation and HR work and something completely different for AT&T. And after six years of that, retired. And then on February 21st, 2018, I started getting all these text messages. And actually, I thought it was one of my kids. I have four kids, so I thought it was one of my kids looking for money. So I handed my husband the phone and said, one of the kids need money. They're blowing up the phone handle it. And then he came back and said, I think you need to return this call. It's Mark Cuban. And so, of course, I asked him who was that and all that. And so when I went to see him, he talked to me about a sports illustrated article that had just come out and was very genuine about wanting a culture transformation. Just to clarify.”
2020-10-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · How I Built Resilience: Cynt Marshall of Dallas Mavericks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT