Comparably has recently partnered with Entrepreneur.com to host a new series entitled, “If I Knew Then Leadership Lessons.” These are one-hour sit-downs with high-profile CEOs of global brands, from Waze to Blue Apron, where they share invaluable lessons that they learned on their path to success, as well as practical career advice they’d give other entrepreneurs.
In the fourth episode of this new series, we had the privilege of speaking to Dallas Mavericks’ CEO Cynt Marshall at this moment in our nation’s history; an especially poignant time as we reexamine the behaviors at the undercurrent of racism that have tainted our country for so long. She is one of the most compelling leaders you’ll ever hear, and her life story – full of some truly unspeakable hardships and her own incredible personal fortitude – is a journey everyone should make time to hear about. When it comes to leadership, Marshall has real wisdom to share.
Marshall has a real knack for learning the right lessons from the setbacks she’s had to endure in her life. And her ability to illustrate how those lessons informed her leadership style and choices for the Mavs and beyond is second-to-none. Below are 10 major points she made during our talk:
1) Everyone has a role in how we reach racial justice in this country. No matter who you are or what your station is in life, this means you. Everyone will have to change some part of their lives or some comfortable way of thinking, forever. All of the toxic, racist behavior we need to actively eradicate from this culture every day is insidious. It can be hidden in our own behavior and in ideas many of us haven’t examined in decades.
2) We’re living through real paradigm shifts in our culture now, so now is the time to change any behavior or practices that need changing. Take chances and be bold, as we’re in a moment where people will be understanding and forgiving of a certain uncertainty in a company’s actions. These next steps are crucial for all of us. Every day we make decisions on who to include or exclude from our workplaces and from our culture. We need to start making the right decision every day.
3) Honesty and kindness is in us as children and it’s worthwhile to recall that when life is challenging. We need to reconnect with and remember those original settings we had as children just coming into this world. It’s a natural inclination to be honest and kind, even a survival instinct, when we’re first beginning to perceive that other people’s lives matter, too. Kindness is among the first assumptions we make when we’re just starting to think for ourselves – even at the age of 3-years-old – and we need to find our way back to this innate purity that we understood early on.
4) A workplace needs to be inviting. Co-workers need to be a family, and navigating a family is often difficult but rewarding. People are coming to work to enjoy their jobs, to make money for their family, and to enhance their lives. They shouldn’t have to come into a hostile work environment or a place where they can expect to be mistreated.
5) Successful business plans are built with everybody in mind. The Mavericks organization has a process where everybody gets to contribute, and to put their ideas and their energy into a new way of operating. It needs to be okay for anyone internally to ask, “Are we ok? Is this particular process working as well as it could?”
6) A player can score 50 points, but it’s the team as a unit that will ultimately count. If the coaching is bad, that one player can’t save the team. Everyone has to be on point when it’s game day. Everyone needs to be ready to say, “Put me in, coach.” And you need to help make them ready by giving them the tools they need to develop their skills, so they can take advantage of those new skills if they find themselves with the ball.
7) Accept that bad things really do happen to good people, but keep going and prevail. It’s unfortunate that setbacks and loss are a part of our lives, but that’s the reality of the situation we’ve been dealt as human beings. You have to accept them and then you have to prevail, because that’s the game as life would have it. Life wants us to keep going even when it simultaneously ruins our year.
8) Life hands you crystal balls and rubber balls, and it’s important for you to know the difference in your life and career. In other words, there’s a difference between doing things right and doing the right thing. Some things are okay to drop, because they’re rubber balls and they’re eager to return to you. Other things are crystal balls, and mishandling them means losing something that won’t be coming around again.
9) A good D&I plan can be enacted very quickly. Marshall famously put together a 100-day Diversity & Inclusion plan to deal with the organization’s dysfunctional culture as she took the CEO reigns. She put up poster boards all around the office to remind everyone of their part of the four-part plan. One part of the plan was designed to fix the organization’s lace of representation in leadership. As a result of the 100 Day Plan, Mavericks’ leadership went from having no women in permanent leadership positions to a current leadership team that is almost 50 percent women and 47 percent people of color.
10) Always remember where you came from because you might forget where you’re going. “I’ve never been embarrassed about being poor when I was a kid, or about any of that,” Marshall says. “It’s easy to get lost, but your roots can be a beacon for you in times of trouble. It really is the purpose of the journey.”
For more of the incredible lessons learned along Cynt Marshall’s inspiring journey, watch the hour-long webinar. Some people are just born with ‘the right stuff’ to be a CEO, and this leader proves that she deserves her spot at the top.