At the age of 11, Leonel Simões already knew what it was like to work. While his friends ran, between games, through the streets of Loures, he walked the same paths, the same streets, from door to door, not playing, but selling cheese. Later he started helping his grandparents and parents: he went from village to village, collecting vegetables that he sold at night at Mercado da Ribeira, in Lisbon.
Born in 1945, in a Portugal of rationing and shortages, Leonel Simões, current administrator of Transportes Luís Simões, grew up at a time when leaving school to work was not an option, it was a question of survival. As a child, he learned to negotiate, to listen and respect the customer, to do math in his head. And he learned, above all, to “walk in fear, but to move forward, even without seeing the whole path”. Because, as he says, “luck doesn’t come if we don’t go after it”.
Leonel Simões, administrator of Transportes Luís Simões, during the recording of the podcast “The CEO is the limit”
José Fonseca Fernandes
And perhaps he began in that childhood to build the foundations of what would become his future life. His father, Fernando Luís Simões, had created a small transport company, born from a cart and a dream shared with his mother, Delfina Soares. Decades later, the business came into the hands of his three sons: Leonel, José Luís (who today presides over the group) and Jorge.
Leonel, the oldest, was responsible for leveraging the company’s transformation and expansion. At the age of 45, he returned to school to achieve this. He went to Instituto Superior Técnico, later to AESE, to fulfill the goal he had set when he came from Africa: “in 20 years, put the company among the top five in the country. Eighteen years later it was there. The most important thing is to always know where we want to get to”, he points out.
Leonel traveled his entire journey as a family, side by side with his brothers. Says that “Alone we can go faster, but together we go much further”. He admits that along the way, not everyone agreed, but they always knew how to listen to each other and, through the exchange of ideas, decide what was best for the company. “When we had to decide who would be president, my brothers wanted it to be me, the oldest. And I said, no, you’ll be the one with the greatest vocation and I’ll support you my whole life”, he recalls. And he adds: “I’ve always worried about knowing who’s number two. If he does his job well, he’ll never let number one fall. I’ve done that my whole life.”
Cátia Mateus podcast The CEO is the limit
The CEO is the limit is Expresso’s leadership and career podcast. Every week, journalist Cátia Mateus shows you who the Portuguese managers who marked the past, those who direct today and those who promise to shape the future are, how they started and what they did to reach the top. Inspiring stories, told in the first person, by those who dare to make things happen. Listen to other episodes:
The post Leonel Simões, administrator of Luís Simões: “If number two does his job well, he will never let number one fall. I’ve done this my whole life” appeared first on Veritas News.
