Mark Minner:

You can overcome a lot of challenges, you can overcome a lot of stressors if you are authentic with your team, with new leaders, with clients, with everybody in the fold. If they know where you're coming from and who you are and what you're trying to convey, little bumps, little issues, challenges, they can be overcome pretty consistently with that ethos.

Tim Spiker:

Being authentic is one of the keys to being trusted by those we lead. And being worthy of our followers' trust, well, that's pretty darn important if you have any intention on being an exceptional leader. I'm your host, Tim Spiker, and this is the Be Worth* Following podcast, a production of the People Forward Network. On this show, we talk with exceptional leaders, thinkers, and researchers about what actually drives effective leadership across the globe and over time. You just heard from Mark Minner, senior vice president of NFP. NFP is the fifth largest benefits broker in the world and is ranked in the top five best places to work in the insurance industry. And when you get to know Mark, you'll begin to understand why. As you'll hear in my discussion with him, Mark is just 32 years old, but his title, responsibilities, and experiences greatly supersede his age.

I believe this is a great episode for both senior leaders and up-and-coming leaders to hear. For senior leaders, you'll get a chance to evaluate your younger leaders against Mark's attitudes and perspectives. For up-and-coming leaders, you'll have a chance to hear from a peer who has accomplished quite a lot very early in his career, including how he ascended to his current leadership role and how he led his organization through the process of being acquired. And be sure to stick around for the end of our discussion to hear a very unique role that Mark plays completely outside of his role as senior vice president. It's a role that allows him to be on the inside of a very unique world, and it is supplying him with valuable leadership lessons that he can apply in his day-to-day role as senior vice president. But first, let's hear from Mark about the leaders who have shaped him, from people he's known his entire life, to a rather well-known name from the world of basketball.

Mark Minner:

One of the things that I feel really fortunate about is that I've had many people that I look up to and aspire to be in one way, shape, or form. And part of the beauty of life and relational depth is that you can pull a little bit from everybody that you come into contact with. But if you think about key people that stand out in different ways, I would start with my parents, for sure, because I was really fortunate to have two amazing parents who are role models in terms of how they treat others, how they view the world, how they try and give the best opportunity possible each and every day for my sister and I. And you don't realize growing up how much of an influence that is on you. That is something that every day that goes by, you become more grateful for that and more appreciative for that.

On the life side, when you go through school, I think so many times, it's professors. And I couldn't even begin to start to name all the professors and teachers along the way that have... coaches that have impacted me. I think from a relatability factor, at a high level, I was fortunate to be in school and be around Butler when Brad Stevens was there. And I think a couple of things stick out to me about Brad Stevens because you're probably not going to read many articles where people don't rave about the type of person that he is, and there's a reason for that. It's because he's as authentic and as genuine, as thoughtful, and as talented as you're going to find of a leader, and he really embraced the servant leader mentality.

So for me, watching Brad go from a 30-year-old head coach and his first job in basketball and only job at Butler to get that opportunity at such a young age, with a team that was on the grow, had come off the Todd Linklater years, take that team to new heights in back-to-back final fours and national championships, do everything right along the way in terms of Xs and Os, how he treated his players, how he treated the media, how he treated fellow coaches and became so admired at such a young age.

But the coolest thing to me about Brad is after all of that success and the movement into the Boston Celtics, he's the same exact person today that he was back then. Certainly he's got more experience and knowledge and things like that. He was one of the first people to call me up when I got the broadcast job at Butler. He keeps in touch with everybody at Butler. He still follows the university. When he approaches, he has no ego. He comes in with the same humility. And it's the little things from all of the experiences I hear, all the former players, all the fans, all the people that he stayed connected with at Butler, that he reaches out proactively with or stays responsive with in all those situations. And he literally has every excuse under the sun not to be the same person, and he is the same person.

So one of the things just purely from a leadership style that I think is really important is authenticity. And watching somebody who's had the meteoric rise that he's had and maintain or even strengthen the humility factor and the authenticity factor is inspirational for me.

Tim Spiker:

What a special background you have. And I don't say that simply because of what you just said about Brad Stevens, but you say, "Hey. It begins with my mom and dad." And then on the heels of that, you get a chance to have exposure to a leader like Brad Stevens, who as you just described, is the type of person you want to emulate not because of all the X and O success, which has been there in spades, but because you have had a backstage pass to know him and to be around him. And that really is what causes that desire to emulate, that desire to follow. And that's really a wonderful background you have to leap off of.

And so let's go ahead and take that leap because you in your own right have had some pretty amazing opportunities and success at a pretty early stage in your career. I want to talk about your role as president and chief strategist for NFP, which was recently previously First Person. I want to talk about that role. And in order to do that, I want to set the stage just a little bit just for the sake of everybody listening. Your current age is?

Mark Minner:

I just celebrated a birthday last week. I turned 32.

Tim Spiker:

My point here is that when it comes to the leadership activity, you are still pretty early in your influence that you're going to have over the course of your life, God willing. And it's interesting to land in a spot, in a title that says president and chief strategy officer at this stage in life. So take us through a little bit your career path that has landed you in such a seat of influence at such an early point in your career.

Mark Minner:

This goes back to opportunity, both preparing yourself, taking advantage of, and most importantly, having people in your life that support you and help you along in that process. So for me, I was originally playing baseball, growing up, enjoying sports, those types of things, and got into school. And I won't go too far into that, but got into school to go to broadcasting. Partway through school realized that broadcasting was a great academic pursuit, but I really liked the idea of business as well. And so picked up a double major in business in my time at Butler and did some internships. Interned at Motorola Solutions, obviously for a large company, then a small company, which was a consulting group housed out of the business school at Butler. Worked with a lot of small businesses, medium-sized businesses, and realized I loved meeting different people. I loved the relationships. I loved the variety and all those things.