Dominic Grinstead joined MetLife UK when it was a startup. Nearly two decades on, he’s CEO of MetLife UK and Head of Employee Benefits, EMEA. In this episode he joins Mindflick co-founders Sir Andrew Strauss and Dr. Pete Lindsay to talk about building a team you can trust, and leading it through crisis after crisis.
Dominic Grinstead joined MetLife UK when it was a startup and was running the business within three years. Nearly two decades on, he’s CEO of MetLife UK and Head of Employee Benefits, EMEA. In the latest Performance Mindset podcast, he sits down with Mindflick co-founders Sir Andrew Strauss and Dr. Pete Lindsay to talk about building a team you can trust, and keeping it together when the ground keeps moving.
Dom’s view is that trust comes before everything. If you’re asking yourself whether you trust someone, you’ve already got your answer. He can put up with a lot of gaps in a person, but not that one. Early in his career he sat in a leadership team that couldn’t get on, and he saw what it cost the business.
Across the conversation, Dom and the hosts get into the financial crisis arriving in his first year as business leader, the decision to walk away from a business line the team had spent ten years building, and why he still writes a 100-day plan on one sheet of A4 before he does anything in a new role. Andrew draws the parallel with his own overnight move from player to England captain. Pete picks up on Dom’s Mindflick profile, which leads with an Optimistic mindset, and asks how he stops “heroic optimism” tipping into wishful thinking when the numbers are bad.
Also on the table: why the soft stuff is the hard stuff, the work his leadership team did on how they worked together while still chasing break-even, and the one mistake Dom says he’s made more than any other.
Tune in to the full conversation with Dominic Grinstead, Sir Andrew Strauss and Dr. Pete Lindsay in the player above