“Communication to me feels like it’s a lost art right now,” Lesley Hawkins reflects, settling into a conversation that would span everything from her 30-year journey through corporate leadership to her current mission of helping leaders thrive in an increasingly disconnected world.
It’s a fitting opening from someone who has spent her career proving that the most powerful business strategies aren’t built in boardrooms—they’re forged through authentic human connection. As the former VP of Retail at adidas Canada, Lesley drove extraordinary results not by outmanoeuvring competitors, but by getting everyone—including direct competitors—to win together.
Her track record speaks volumes: 6.4% compound annual growth at adidas Golf, successful transformation of retail partnerships across the golf industry, and the remarkable feat of rebuilding trust with 1,200 exhausted retail workers during the pandemic while simultaneously strengthening external relationships. Today, as Co-Founder of Marsley Canada consulting with her husband and business partner Mark, she’s showing other leaders how relationship-driven strategy becomes the ultimate competitive moat.
“I’ve seen some strategies that were brilliant on paper that absolutely collapsed after six months because there was no communication,” she explains. “The communication was full of jargon, industry speak, wasn’t easy for teams to understand, and it ended up with months and months of work, thousands of dollars spent, ending up on the cutting room floor because the average associate had no idea what it actually meant.”
What 1,200 Exhausted Workers Taught Her
When Lesley stepped into her role leading adidas retail business, she inherited a team that had been through hell. “I adopted a really tired group of associates. They were just like everybody in retail, exhausted. They had worked long hours, they had had to pivot so many times we lost count. They’d been spat upon, literally. It’s ridiculous what retail had to go through.”
Rather than impose her vision from day one, Lesley chose vulnerability over authority. “The last time I was on the retail floor actually working, was before the internet started, like a million years ago,” she admits with characteristic humour. “I needed to be able to understand what life was like then and what they needed it to be.”
Her approach was disarmingly simple: listening sessions with every level of store leadership, built around three fundamental questions.
“I said, ‘I want to know three things. One is, why are you here? So why are you working? What’s your story? What got you to having this conversation with me? Two, what is your biggest frustration? And three, if you’re in my shoes, what would you do?’ And I took notes. I’m a voracious note taker.”
The insights were immediately actionable. “In one store, the entire leadership team played basketball together. We didn’t have any basketball products in that store. I was like, that’s probably a bit of a miss. Okay, let’s see if we can change that.”
But the real revelation went deeper. “The store associates are the closest people to the consumer. They know the consumer better than anybody. They know the consumer better than I do and my team who sits in an office. They’re in front of them every day and yet they were the last group that anybody spoke to.”
This created a fundamental shift in how decisions were made. “It was, here’s a decision from corporate, we’re just gonna push it down on these store associates. And then we sit back and go, well, why didn’t it work? And so, you get to point the finger at the store associate. Well, you didn’t set them up for success at all.”
The solution was institutionalizing two-way communication. “I did it, then my team started to do it, all of the leaders started to do it. We did coffee chats. So every Thursday I would allow people to go into my calendar and block off 45 minutes. They could talk about anything. It didn’t matter if they were talking about getting a divorce or not liking their boss or asking for an explanation of a policy—whatever, it didn’t matter what they talked about.”
The impact was transformational. “It really got us to a place where we had calls every week. We called it the Retail Rally, we had so much fun. Because we’re all people trying to do the best we can with the structure and the policy and the guidelines that we have in place. How do we make this work for all of us? How are we all going to be successful?”
Becoming the Trusted Business Advisor
Long before her retail transformation at adidas, Lesley was solving a different puzzle in the golf industry that would become the foundation for everything that followed. Golf professionals entered the business for all the right reasons—they loved the sport, loved teaching, loved building relationships with customers. But retail? That wasn’t their strength.
“What they’re not necessarily really strong at is retail,” she explains. “While retail is taught as part of their program, it isn’t the core. They don’t wake up every day thinking, okay, I need to make sure that I re-merchandise my store. That’s not their thinking at all. And it’s no disservice to them. It’s just one of the 400 hats that they have to wear every day. It’s ridiculous. They’re like the District Manager version of retail, wearing so many hats.”
Rather than accept this as an insurmountable challenge, Lesley saw an opportunity to fundamentally change the relationship dynamic. “There was an opportunity for these golf professionals to become better retailers. And their business would grow if they became better retailers. Well, the same as a wholesaler was true. I needed their business to grow with us in particular in order for our overall business to grow. So it was all about education.”
Enter FootJoy University—a program that would become the template for everything Lesley would do next.
“We introduced a program, we call it a university program, so it was called FootJoy University. And it was the idea that we would bring together golf professionals who are in essence competitors, but we’re all in the room together and we would go across the country and train them on all different parts of retail.”
The curriculum was comprehensive but practical. “It started out really basic with things like what is retail merchandising? What does visual merchandising mean? How do consumers interact with your golf shop? All the stats of 90% of Canadians are right-handed. They’re going to walk in and turn right. This is how the eye goes in retail. All of the basics of consumer behaviour.”
The transformation was remarkable. “What came of that was a great partnership with our customers and they were able to instill some of these lessons into their team. They grew their business. We helped them grow their business. In turn, it grew our business, and we then became their trusted business advisor.”
But it went beyond the basics. “Then it was more about the operations part. It was about how you merchandise. It was how you run promotions without always being off price because you don’t want to be off price as the season, the golf season is so short, you need to capitalize on every dollar possible.”
This last point became central to Lesley’s philosophy. “I’ve used that term for years and years and years, and it’s because it doesn’t matter what position you’re in, if you can become someone’s trusted business advisor, that takes you to the next level. That takes you beyond just being transactional, and now it’s relational. And the moment you can make that switch, things completely change and that’s where you can see your business and you as a leader also thrive.”
The Audacious Competitor Experiment
If FootJoy University was revolutionary, what Lesley did next was downright audacious: she put direct competitors in the same room and asked them to help build her strategy.
The setup required careful orchestration. “I invited 10 people, 10 customers who were essentially competitors into the room and I said, okay, you’re going to be our Advisory Board. And I found those people through obviously my relationships within the industry, but it was people that I knew that wouldn’t tell me what I wanted to hear. They were going to challenge me, they were going to question me, they were going to bring their own unique ideas, and they were going to be vocal.”
The composition was deliberate. “It was purposeful who I chose. And I chose people who fit all of those, but then also were at locations that some were private, some were semi-private, some were public, so that there was a real cross-section.”
The ground rules were clear but revolutionary. “I got everyone in the room and said, okay, so here’s how this is gonna go. Beyond signing the NDA, we’re going to open up the vault to you. We’re going to tell you about things that are happening well before anybody else. We’re going to show you the product before anyone else.”
But this wasn’t a one-way street. “This is a two-way street. So I’m gonna share with you changes in policies and procedures and everything else. And I need you to shoot me down. I need you to tell me everything that’s wrong with it. And I need you to tell me all of the arguments that we’re going to have with your competitors, with the other customers.”
The strategic value was immediate. “So that by the time we came out of those meetings and we went and hit the road, we already knew where our challenges were going to be. We already knew what was going to be coming at us. And so our team was much more prepared for all the naysayers and everything else.”
But something unexpected happened once competitors were in the room together. “Getting the competitors in the room was really interesting because while we’re all trying to be nice and friendly, there is an edge. But by signing the NDA, it actually meant that they had to put their personal bias aside. And very quickly, really, the culture that we created of this is 100% collaborative, it created some incredible conversations and incredible partnerships and partnerships that people wouldn’t have thought of.”
The conversations became genuinely transformational. “All of a sudden people started sitting up in their chairs going, huh, you did that? How did you do that? How did you overcome it? It bled into other conversations. How did you change that mentality with your board? How did you do, right?”
One story perfectly illustrates the ripple effect. “There was one golf professional who came into a brand new role, really excited to get it. The first thing he did is he went to his board and said, I’m not working six or seven days a week. I’m gonna work five days a week. Not Monday to Friday, I’ll work Tuesday through Saturday. But I’m not falling into the trap that most people do in the golf industry, which is, well, the Golf Pro has to be available 24/7.”
His boldness sparked broader change. “He’s like, no, me and my team, we’re working five days a week. We will service you, we will do everything. You’ll be the best team ever, but we’re not doing it six or seven days a week. And all of a sudden, it now started the whole conversation with all the other pros saying, I’ve only ever worked seven days a week through the summer. And it created these conversations that would never really have happened.”
The Multiplier Effect in Action
Success created its own momentum. The Advisory Board model proved so effective that demand for similar partnerships exploded across the industry.
“It became a sought-after position,” Lesley notes with obvious satisfaction. “Best marketing is word-of-mouth. Created an Advisory Board made up of a variety of partners, included them in strategic planning, leaned on for insights, told us what we were going to face with the customer base when changes were implemented. Open, honest, fair.”
This multiplier effect extended into retail innovation as well. At adidas, Lesley applied the same principles to physical retail transformation, starting with the Toronto Lab at the CF Toronto Eaton Centre.
“We introduced the idea of bringing in some new vendors, bringing in some new vendors that had different digital capabilities, had different ideas, and had different applications. And we did what Canadians do best, which is we ‘test and learn’. And it was a great experience. [The Toronto Lab] has gone through so many iterations. But that’s being reflected in how well it’s doing, the popularity of it with consumers.”
Success in Toronto informed expansion to Vancouver. “Fast forward a few years and now it comes to the Vancouver store, which is, okay, now we need to take customization and personalization to another level because we’ve already set the benchmark. So how do you do that?”
The solution embodied her relationship-first philosophy. “Okay, let’s try some other localized vendors, see what they can do. Let’s introduce something totally different. What about a running lab? Okay, [the brand] have tested it in other areas, but to varying degrees of success. Okay, well, let’s get somebody in who leads it, who is a runner, who lives and breathes that community, and who thinks not like a retailer, but thinks like a runner first and a retailer second. And it was a game changer.”
Trusting Your Gut in the Age of Data
In a world increasingly dominated by algorithmic decision-making, Lesley makes a compelling case for human intuition as irreplaceable competitive advantage.
“There is no computer, there is no AI that can create this conversation that you and I are having. There is an authenticity to personal interaction and I, you know, as a mother, I’ve learned over the years, you trust your gut. You trust your gut with absolutely everything that you do. And the moment you don’t is the moment that you make a mistake.”
She illustrates this with a hiring story that perfectly captures the power of relationship over resume. When rebuilding her team at adidas Golf, she needed a Director of Sales. The conventional choice was obvious—someone with deep industry knowledge and existing customer relationships.
But then she met Jeff Feltrin.
“I met this gentleman who I didn’t know. I didn’t know him from the industry and I quite frankly thought I knew everybody but I didn’t. And he came in for an interview and I had my stock questions ready to go. We had an hour and we talked for an hour and a half. We never once touched any of the questions. We talked about family, we talked about the industry, we talked about our values. We literally talked about everything other than, ‘so why do you want this job and what are your strengths and all of the normal cache questions.'”
The decision came down to instinct over analysis. “He was up against another person who I had known for a long time, who had lots of industry knowledge, who knew the inner workings of the business, who had been with the organization for a long time. But there was this intangible. There was no way on a piece of paper where, you know, after an interview you sort of rate people of a scale of one to five, there was no way that there was any data that was going to showcase how I felt in my gut, how I felt about what it would be like to work with this person and the relational leader that he was and I thought, this actually could become a game changer.”
The result validated her instincts completely. “So Jeff Feltran is an incredible leader. When I left adidas Golf, he moved into that role. He continues to excel. The business is on fire and he has become a good personal friend. AI can’t do that. It just can’t.”
This experience reinforced a core belief that guides her work today. “I know that there’s all kinds of technology out there. It’s not lost on me that, you know, ChatGPT and all of these others have got their benefits and I get it. I use it. But there’s something about human connection that is just so important right now. We spend all of our time on screens, on devices, with who knows what coming at us. You can’t even tell what’s real, whether it’s a picture or a story or anything else. And I think human connection is a lost art form.”
Building the Future with Marsley
Today, Lesley and Mark are building Marsley, their consulting firm that embodies everything she’s learned about leadership excellence and relationship-driven strategy. Even the partnership itself demonstrates her principles in action.
“My husband and I started our own business called Marsley and it was purposeful. We’ve spent a lot of time in corporate working in very, very different industries. I was always focused on sports. He’s been in the car industry, the environmental drilling industry, supply industry. It’s a very different experience. And the way we approach business is equally different. I’m sales, marketing, merchandising with more of a finance background. He’s more of an operational person.”
The complementary dynamic is intentional. “I term him as my dreamer. He’s like, yeah, but what if, and he goes straight to the utopia of what if we could make this happen? And then my job is to then say, okay, well, I don’t know that we can get there, but we can get a little bit more grounded and we can be creative and innovative. He is the yin to my yang and it works quite well.”
Their approach reflects hard-won wisdom about partnership dynamics. “The other thing is, as I’ve spoken about before, I move with speed and I’m used to always, you know, being three, four steps ahead and he is a really good anchor where he slows me down. He’s like, okay, no, you need to take a deep breath. And I think it doesn’t matter who your business partner is, whoever you’re in business with needs to be your compliment. And if the room was filled with people like me, we would be in trouble, right? We would be running in 47 directions. I mean, I’d be exhausted.”
The Relationship Economy
As AI capabilities continue to advance, Lesley believes human connection becomes not just important, but essential for competitive survival. Her response cuts to the heart of what makes humans irreplaceable in business strategy.
“There is no computer, there is no AI that can create this conversation that you and I are having. There is an authenticity to personal interaction and as a mother, I’ve learned over the years, you trust your gut. You trust your gut with absolutely everything that you do. And the moment you don’t is the moment that you make a mistake. And so I have learned over the years that my gut instinct will invariably lead me in the right direction. And I’ve done that in my personal life, but I’ve also done a lot of that in my professional life.”
For retail leaders navigating an increasingly complex landscape, Lesley’s journey offers a different path forward—one built on the radical idea that success comes not from beating others, but from helping everyone win together.
“I know as a leader, I don’t know everything. I’m going to surround myself with people who are much smarter than me and we’re all going to learn more together,” she reflects. “It’s all about making that move of being transactional to being relational and how you do that.”
In an age where authentic human connection might be the scarcest—and most valuable—competitive advantage of all, Lesley Hawkins has shown us that the future of strategy isn’t about being the smartest person in the room. It’s about building rooms where everyone gets smarter together.
Lesley Hawkins is a leadership speaker and consultant. Learn more about her work at LesleyHawkins.ca and Marsley.ca.