Prime Minister Narendra Modi described himself as a ‘God-given’ leader who ‘does not get distracted by phone calls, messages’ but is a person who is completely committed to his work.
while talking to newsweek In an exclusive interview, the PM said, ‘Listening is an important quality for leadership. This quality is God given to me and I have also developed it. Another quality I have is that I am always in the moment. I don’t get distracted by phone calls, messages or anything else. When I am doing something, I am 100 percent involved and engrossed in that work.”
Elaborating on good leadership qualities, he said, leaders should have bottom-up feedback channels and the ability to connect with the grassroots and receive unfiltered feedback.
“There should also be multiple channels of feedback, so that human biases and preferences are neutralized.”
“When I was the Chief Minister of Gujarat, I got a call at around 3 o’clock from someone from a town called Curzon. Usually no one alerts a Chief Minister so early in the morning, but my staff knew my working style, so they alerted me. That person called and informed about a massive explosion in our city. He said that I had come to his house for food in my initial days, so he was familiar with me and wanted to call me directly. I asked him what could be the reason for this. He told me that the railway line passes near his house and it could be something related to the railways. Therefore, I called the district administration, railway officials and my staff to get information about the incident. None of them knew about it, but immediately the entire administration got to work. It turned out to be a train accident.”
He also said that good leadership also means knowing how to delegate work. “I spend a long time understanding and discussing important matters and developing consensus. Once a consensus is reached, I believe in empowering people to implement it,” he told newsweek
Modi also mentioned that it is important to be empathetic towards the feelings and sensitivities of the people if one aspires to be a good leader. “I receive lakhs of physical letters every month. I manage to check many letters and see for myself the feelings expressed by people. The idea of Mann Ki Baat comes from these letters [a monthly radio program] came to my mind. We have 110 Mann Ki Baat episodes so far.”
“I didn’t even know I was good at communication. When I came into politics, people saw it. So I said to myself, let’s put this skill to good use.”
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Published: April 10, 2024, 10:39 PM IST
