- MGMT Playbook
- Posts
- The AI Enhanced Leader: 7 Practical Ways AI Can Help You Lead More Effectively
The AI Enhanced Leader: 7 Practical Ways AI Can Help You Lead More Effectively
Ai isn't perfect. But neither are your people. Get the best from both.
Dave Kline
April 05, 2024
The AI-Enhanced MGMT Accelerator
We’re making a big change to our Top-Rated MGMT Accelerator program.
In addition to:
An engaged group of 50 high-trajectory leaders
8 live sessions to co-create your management system
1:1 coaching with me to solve your biggest leadership challenge
We’re adding a highly practical way to get leverage from AI at every step of the management process. If you’re not hands-on with AI, you’re falling behind. Let us help get you started!
The program starts April 30th, and seats are limited.
Read Time: 4 minutes
"AI won't replace humans, but humans with AI will replace humans without AI"
I've always aspired for the MGMT Playbook to be a conversation, not a dissertation.
And this week might achieve that ethos most effectively. I asked my 65,000 LinkedIn followers for practical examples of how they're using AI.
Their answers did not disappoint.
Generate High-Signal Interview Questions
"ChatGPT and Perplexity have been helpful when designing interview loops. I'll start with the job description and break down the key skills I'm attempting to get signal for in each stage.
From there, I can use an LLM to generate a long list of example questions for that interviewer. The first draft responses from the model usually aren't good enough to be used directly, but it's a great way to build momentum and creativity when writing up interview questions."
I've worked with some leaders who keep going, getting drafts of rubrics for grading the questions based on their targets. They'll also have ChatGPT draft emails advancing or rejecting candidates based on specific information from the searches and interviews.
Draft Agendas
"My favorite use of late … developing agendas for monthly and quarterly meetings. Prompt it with your goals, KPI's and any specific areas of concerns. Give it the timeframe and you get a solid agenda. Has been working great."
Our friend Marco Andre recently posted about using this to design an offsite. The value wasn't that it made a perfect offsite agenda. The value was that instead of sending someone off to do work and circling back for another meeting, they started iterating on a draft in 20 seconds.
Real-Time Coach for Introverts
"A client uses AI to help her formulate clear thoughts when she's on a Zoom call, so when it's her turn to speak, her answers are more polished."
Related, I've heard several managers, especially if they're upset or have gotten feedback on their tone, using ChatGPT to give them feedback or rewrite it differently. Those longwinded become concise. Those terse become diplomatic.
The AI Writing Assistant
"I'm using AI to help me clarify my writing. The workflow goes like this:
1. Write a stream of consciousness on a topic.
2. Ask ChatGPT to summarize it for me.
3. Rewrite that summary to fix all the AI-ness and add details.
4. Feed it back to ChatGPT and ask to summarize and outline it for me.
5. Use that outline to write the final piece."
I'm excited to give this a shot. I've found it great for giving me a wildly mediocre but instantaneous first draft that I can react to.
Plain Language Contracts
"We use AI every day, but one of the things I love most is using it to make our Event contracts better. I love taking "legalese" and finding more streamlined ways to convey the same information. It does take some discernment because certain contract phrases are legal terms of art, but too many clauses are inflated by antiquated, passive voice verbiage that just gets copied and pasted onto new documents. AI still has a long way to go in the legal field and shouldn't replace good judgment and experience, but it is a promising tool."
Love this. I'm tempted to try this in reverse, asking for a plain language contract that will fit on one page and protect me from {insert key risks}.
Get Coached To Coach More Effectively
"Leaders can chat with AI to coach them to become better coaches for their teams. Eg describe a desired performance improvement for the team or an individual and ask AI to give you 3 to 5 questions to ask the person that will help you and them better understand what is hindering them and how to move forward."
Honestly, I think that most people would benefit from using this practice on themselves. There's just no reason not to prompt it to challenge your thinking or give you common sense advice that others in your position have faced. It strikes me as having the benefits of journaling, plus the journal responds in any voice you'd like.
Get Smart About Your Health
While not submitted formally, we're investors in immi, and Kevin's an alum of our MGMT Accelerator. So when we saw his post, it felt like serendipity to include it.
Got bloodwork done to check my biomarkers (health indicators for biological processes). The panel results came back in a dense PDF filled with confusing jargon and numbers.
Miraculously was able to upload these PDFs to ChatGPT which explained all my biomarker insights like I was… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
— Kevin Lee (@kevinleeme)
Apr 4, 2024
Bonus - Create Your Board of Directors
I just wrapped up reading a book I've heard a lot about but never made time to read, "Think and Grow Rich." While the language and some of the norms seem dated, most of the principles of success do not.
The author tells a story near the end about how he used to vividly visualize hosting an imaginary council meeting with some of the greatest minds in history every night: Emerson, Paine, Edison, Darwin, Lincoln, Burbank, Napoleon, Ford, and Carnegie.
He credits this practice for leading to breakthroughs in his work, which made this Daniel Kenny suggestion too fascinating and timely not to include.
It replicates Napoleon Hill’s council exercise except ChatGPT allows you to interact with them outside your own mind. He even generously included his prompts for us.
Prompt 1
"Hi, ChatGPT. You are going to play the role of multiple people on a board of advisors for my life. I am part of the board of advisors myself. The purpose of the advisory board is to help me create a meaningful life where I feel deeply fulfilled by doing work that I find valuable to me ([Insert your areas of interest, ex; for me it's teaching behavior change and discovering purpose]), where I [insert desired outcomes you are working towards]. The business we are building is myself and my brand. The advisory board helps me interrogate my own thinking, understand a problem, brainstorm possible solutions, provide advice, and ultimately find the best solution to the stated problem with the help of everyone in the group. Every member has my life and my business's success as their primary goal.
In your answers, indicate which member of the advisory board you are playing by first stating their name enclosed in square brackets with the words "-simulated" (e.g., [Steve Jobs — simulated]). Everybody replies as if they were the role they play. Here are the names of people on the advisory board:
[Insert names]
Prompt 2
"For each response, you are free to select one or more advisory board members to respond.
Sometimes, I want to hear everyone in the group give their answer to my question. In that case, I will type, EVERYONE.
Sometimes, I don't want advice, I'll just want questions to help coach me through the problem. These questions should encourage me to think about different perspectives and frames, while encouraging me to discover my own solution. If I want this, I will type QUESTIONS.
Sometimes, I want the various members of the advisory board to present differing points of view from one another and encourage a robust debate about the merits of their responses. The members of the group are free to agree or disagree with each other and should reference the points of view of the other members when formulating their responses. When I want the group to debate, I will type DEBATE.
You are entirely free to act as the people in the advisory board.
At any time, if you feel you need more information from me to provide your answer, ask me follow-up questions before providing your responses. Do you understand?"
What’s Your Preference?
We’re trying a new send time this week. Let us know what you think
What day and time do you prefer to read the MGMT Playbook? |
Thank you for reading. Appreciate you!
Dave
Ways To Work With Us
MGMT Accelerator - Our flagship leadership development program is taught live over 8 sessions. 50 leaders from companies around the world will build out their foundational management systems together. Perfect for leaders with 3-10 years experience. The next cohort starts April 30th.
Customized Leadership Programs - Bring our MGMT Accelerator in-house in a two-day intensive workshop. We get to know your culture and current practices and help your managers build a common language and approach to leading. Ideal for scaling companies with 20+ leaders.
1:1 Executive Coaching - I work with 5 C-level executives to help them become more effective leaders while solving real business problems. I’ll have space to add one leader later this summer. Contact me to schedule an intro call.
Speaking - We’re now booking keynotes for summer. Hit reply on this note, and we can set up a time to discuss topics and pricing.
MGMT Playbook - If you’re here because someone forwarded this email, please subscribe before you leave.