‘I am god-gifted…,’ PM Modi on how he ‘cultivated’ leadership skills as Lok Sabha polls near

livemint.com:

PM Narendra Modi referred to himself as a ‘god-gifted’ leader who is not ‘distracted by phone calls, messages’ but someone who is fully committed to his work. While speaking to Newsweek in an exclusive interview, PM said, “Listening is an important quality for leadership. I am god-gifted with this quality, and I have also cultivated it.

Another quality that I have is that I am always in the moment. I am not distracted by phone calls, messages or anything else. When I am doing something, I am 100 percent involved and engrossed in that task." Elaborating on good leadership qualities, he said, leaders need to have a bottom-to-top feedback channel and the ability to connect to the grassroots and get unfiltered feedback.

“There should also be multiple such channels of feedback, so that human biases and preferences get neutralized." “When I was the Chief Minister of Gujarat, I received a call around 3 a.m. from someone in a town called Karjan. Normally, no one alerts a Chief Minister so early in the morning, but my staff knew my working style, so they alerted me.

The person called to report a loud explosion in our town. He said I had come to his home for a meal in my earlier days, so he had familiarity with me and the urge to call me directly. I asked him what could be the reason.

He told me that the railway line passes close to his house and it could be something related to the railways. So, I called the district administration, railway officials and my staff to inquire about the incident. None of them had heard about it, but immediately the entire administration set out to work.