Leon Daniels has produced his ‘Lunch with Leon’ podcast, in association with Passenger Transport, since 2020 – but this time he faced the questions

 
Leon Daniels

 
Since he launched his popular Lunch with Leon podcast five years ago, transport expert Leon Daniels has interviewed more than 100 guests. But the tables are turned in a special Christmas edition of the podcast, with Daniels facing questions from broadcaster Simon Letterman.

Daniels reflects on his long career in transport and offers advice to those starting out on the career journey. And he explains why he will never retire!

Ask what advice he would give to a 16-year-old about how they approach their future in an uncertain world, Daniels responds: “My recommendation is find something you’re passionate about and see if you can’t find a way of making it your livelihood. Because … if you’re doing something you really enjoy and find satisfying, then you really are going to get a lot out of life.

“It’s a tragedy, isn’t it, to spend eight hours a day, 40 hours a week, doing something you hate in order to earn enough money to eat and live.”

He also urges young people to be adaptable. “The days of people working for 40 odd years, as my father did, 40 odd years for one employer doing one career are gone,” he says. “I think for a long time there’s almost no benefit. Now, in fact, it works against you if you appear to have a have a long career.

“So we are looking, I think, for people who will change their jobs and possibly their whole area of activity more than several times during the course of their lifetime. Because, of course, the science and technology is making the change happen more often.”

Daniel’s first paid job in transport was in what is now the Department for Transport, but he want on to work in the private sector. He believes that this breadth of experience was vital when he took on the role of managing director of surface transport at Transport of London.

“I couldn’t have done I couldn’t have done the TfL job if I hadn’t done all that in the private sector in my time.” he says. “So the TfL job was, without doubt, the peak of my career, the thing I enjoyed most. Who wouldn’t want to be working every day at the Olympic Park? So TfL and the Olympic Games was the peak of my career, but I couldn’t have done it without the decades of private sector experience that got me there.”

I’m never retiring. That’s for wimps, isn’t it? You know, why would you retire? … Why would I give this up?

Daniels encourages young people to believe in themselves and their potential. Those who know him might not believe it, but Daniels says he was “the shy little boy at school who, when my parents went to parents evening, the teacher couldn’t remember me being there at all”.

“This is a message to everybody, especially the young people, you can do anything you want,” he says. “If you put your mind to it. You can do absolutely anything. And people sometimes are negative, if you like, about ambition, but ambition sounds like you’re going to push other people out of the way so you can succeed. That’s not what I consider to be ambition. Ambition is about you yourself, having the confidence and gaining the ability to do things that you might want to do.”

Reflecting on his time in transport, Daniels says that decarbonisation is the most significant change he has witnessed. Meanwhile, as someone with a keen interest in the history of tramsport, he urges us to remember that many our current challenges – and the solutions to them – are not new.

When he retired from TfL in 2017 it was not the end of his transport career. “It was just, effectively, just carrying on what I was doing before, but only doing the good bits,” he explains.

Retirement doesn’t feature in his thinking. “I’m never retiring,” declares Daniels. “That’s for wimps, isn’t it? You know, why would you retire? … Why would I give this up?

“I’ve got taught, as you know, to create, perform and put together music by an 18-year-old student in the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, when I was there doing a speech. So I went and did my speech, and then this young student taught me how to do AI music. I mean, why would you give up? Why would you retire from that?

So no, I’m afraid to say I’m here, plaguing all of you, lobbying, representing, speaking my mind and travelling until the doctor tells me I can’t.”

 
This article appears in the latest issue of Passenger Transport.

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