Leonie Faddy knows that her job as a leader is done when her team is ready to fly the coop, and she firmly believes that having unpopular opinions can be beneficial.
As global CMO of the popular Australian beauty brand Go-To Skincare, Faddy compares her leadership approach to conducting an orchestra and believes it’s important to ‘manage up’ and know what’s important to the board members and CEO.
Before joining the Go-To team, Faddy was the global marketing and sales director at The Beauty Chef, and before this, she worked at The Estée Lauder Companies.
Here, Faddy speaks to her shift from big beauty corporations to founder-led brands, which in the case of Go-To, are becoming global icons in their own right.
Inside Retail: What key roles and experiences have shaped your career journey?
Leonie Faddy: One of the biggest game-changers for me was moving from a big ‘corporate’ company to a smaller ‘founder-led’ business.
My first role in this type of business was with Doctors Formula (a skincare distributor) – the ability to impact and shape this business from a creative perspective was so different from my time at Estee Lauder.
I loved the more agile and hands-on way of working and it helped to direct my career path to smaller, growing founder-led brands that showed huge potential but needed strategy, team building and an ability to think and act quickly and outside the box – often with small budgets.
IR: Can you share any challenges you’ve faced as you’ve laid out your career path?
LF: I think one of the biggest challenges has been juggling family and career.
It takes top-level organisational skills, a lot of stamina and patience, a supportive family or network around you and an acceptance that at times you may not nail everything.
It certainly gets easier and now that my kids have grown I am so glad I have a fulfilling career that gives me so much satisfaction and purpose, but it has been hard at times.
IR: What are you most proud of leading your team?
LF: I think the proudest moments can also be the hardest – when you have seen one of your team grow and develop as much as they can in your business and the only way forward and up for them is to move to another role outside the business.
It is bittersweet as they are usually high performers, but for me, it’s a sign of good leadership and makes me feel very proud.
IR: How big is the team you lead?
LF: My team at Go-To consists of digital, e-commerce, design, brand and content, PR and customer service.
All up it’s about 20 people.
IR: What’s your leadership style? And how have you honed this?
LF: I would say my leadership style is relaxed, collaborative and strategic.
I want my team to have a good balance of being challenged and passionate but also understand that at the end of the day, it is only skincare and we should not sweat the small stuff.
This has been an approach I have had to work on myself, as I have a tendency to ‘sweat the small stuff’. I have been lucky enough to have some great managers in my career who have taken a more relaxed approach to work and I try to remember how I have felt by their approach and be sure to pass that on to my team.
IR: How would you describe the company culture at Go-To Skincare, and how do you contribute to fostering that culture as a leader?
LF: I think first and foremost it is a culture of kindness – that is always what I try to lead with.
I don’t believe culture to be about perks and benefits, so much as the feeling of support, kindness and job satisfaction that you hopefully get every day when you are at work – and that is what I try to foster at Go-To, daily.
IR: What advice would you give to emerging marketing leaders who aspire to reach the CMO level in their careers?
LF: It’s not so popular anymore, but I would say it’s ok and actually beneficial to be a generalist.
I have a strong grasp on all the areas in my remit, but I could not necessarily do each and every role, and that’s OK.
A CMO is a little bit like a conductor in an orchestra, constantly making sure everyone is in tune and performing well together as a team, aligned to the strategy, and budget.
Managing up is also important, learn what matters to the CEO and the board members – always be very clear on how your strategy and team are focusing on those points.
IR: What drew you to the beauty and skincare industry, and what excites you most about working in this space?
LF: I always knew I wanted to work in this industry.
As a teenager I was obsessed with skincare and makeup – if Sephora had been around then, I absolutely would have been a ‘Sephora Kid”.
I was lucky to land a role at Estee Lauder not long after uni and that was it, I knew I would always stay working in beauty.
It’s fast-paced and competitive, which I love and I also love seeing people feel confident and empowered by healthy skin and good makeup. It’s an important part of our culture and for many, more than just a daily part of their life, and I love that.
IR: How do you balance creative vision with data-driven decision-making in your role?
LF: That is a real challenge, so much of marketing is gut feeling, intuition and anecdotal feedback and I see data points as a way to test the assumptions that come from my intuition as a marketer.
I let data validate my assumptions rather than dictate the strategy. Others may disagree with this approach, but I truly don’t believe that good and clever marketing is all science.
Brand building is about customer connection and understanding what people want to hear, see, and buy at any one point. Data can map this historically, but it can’t replace understanding the market and what is happening in the zeitgeist.
This article is part of Inside Retail’s #IRWD365 campaign, in partnership with Airwallex, to shine a spotlight on inspiring women in Australia’s retail industry and drive tangible change towards gender equality.
