Leveraging AI for Superior Decision-Making in Leadership
Integrate AI tools to enhance your effectiveness at work
Unpopular opinion alert (at least within the world of executive coaches) - any coach who predominantly relies upon their mental dexterity to deliver their coaching will rapidly be out of work.
In a similar way for consultants, unless you can differentiate, these will be low-value roles to be replaced by current and future versions of the Large Language Models (LLMs).
My view, and I acknowledge I am talking my book here and so recognise there are several cognitive biases at work in my head, is to differentiate as an executive coach, one needs a broad and deep array of knowledge and expertise across five core competencies:
Business acumen
Organisational knowledge
Coaching knowledge
Psychological knowledge
Leadership experience
I strongly advise not starting as a coach and building a practice that relies exclusively on #3 and #4.
ChatGPT will already be able to replicate, or very soon, it will be able to deliver 80% of those competencies for entry-level "democratised" coaching. Don't get me wrong; eventually, LLMs will be able to incorporate all five competencies as your personal, on-demand executive coaches. However, as Maverick says, "…but not today." or anytime soon.
Will you be replaced, devalued, or supercharged by AI?
This got me thinking: How can knowledge workers who are rewarded for their judgement and ability to make good decisions use generative AI in their current jobs?
How does one create:
"A personal analyst", or
"A consultant on call", or
"A coach in your pocket"?
Here are some ways to use ChatGPT or your favourite LLM to improve your skills and aid with continuous learning. To help you learn new things, carry out tasks, write better, conduct research, and act as a challenging partner to poke holes in to improve your ideas.
Let's look at it using a coaching example. I wanted to help a client better understand the concept of flow at work and what parts of their work create this state. I then helped them move towards doing more of that while reducing other non-flow-inducing tasks and interactions.
To do this, I wanted to use the power of inversion, a thinking process in which you consider the opposite of what you want to achieve. Instead of directly seeking success, in this case, achieving the flow state, it involves thinking about how to avoid failing to achieve it. For some people, this can lead to more effective strategies because it highlights any obstacles and risks that might not be immediately apparent.
I asked ChatGPT three questions and checked the response was accurate each time before proceeding to the following question:
Are you familiar with the power of "Inversion?"
Are you familiar with the theory of "Flow" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi?
Can you apply the power of inversion to the steps required to achieve flow and produce a concise checklist of things to avoid doing?
Here is an extract. By inverting the principles of flow and identifying what to avoid, I wanted to identify conditions more conducive to entering and maintaining a flow state. As the coach, it is at my discretion when or whether to use the tool in service of my client.
Another prompt style you could use is to define the role you want ChatGPT to take, the objective you wish help to achieve and your intended audience. This can be powerful in helping you become the best-informed person in your team on the tasks, projects and areas you're assigned. It can help you to learn all about your clients, technologies, tools and projects, and the ins and outs of the business. Nb: most people you'll work with will be too lazy to do this kind of homework, so it is an excellent way to differentiate.
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Role: You are an expert in the field of X who works exclusively with professionals from the Y and Z sectors.
Objective: Your mission is to create an ABC that I can use to help me better understand our clients and their demands and be more effective at work. I will share the topic of interest in the form of JKL that I want you to research and base ABC on.
Audience: My role is DEF, where I lead a team to deliver GHI.
Does this all make sense?
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You should save the prompts that work for you so you can quickly call upon your personal analyst, consultant on call, or coach in your pocket. Any time of day. And any day of the week, it will never get tired, bored, or frustrated.
🏋️ Monthly Challenge: create your first personal analyst, consultant on call, or coach in your pocket.
"Knowledge that cannot be applied will soon be forgotten."
So go on. Give it a go.
Write your very own prompt using these headings. Then, iterate to see how to improve the output you get from ChatGPT.
Role:
You are…
Objective:
Your mission is to…
Audience:
People in…
Details:
I will supply…
Format:
Your summary should…
The tone and style should be…
Does this all make sense?
📫 - A quote that I am currently pondering
"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn."
Alvin Toffler (author)
🧾 - An absorbing and insightful (short) read
"Something new and radical…"
Here is the Twitter/X thread - link. This is a timely and relevant thread, considering the Conservative Party's surprise manifesto policy of reintroducing national service for 18-year-olds here in the UK.
I think it is important for us to be aware of our many cognitive biases such as anchoring or priming that we can see going on with these questions to lead to the answer "we want to arrive at." It's even more crucial to be ask probing questions and to be vigilant in the new world of industrial scale AI produced content and outright fake or misleading news used to spread an agenda.
Everyone should watch the brilliant Sir Nigel Hawthorne as Sir Humphrey Appleby. Of course, Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister, are entirely fictional… although one can't help but think that if the BBC ever decided to refresh the series it would require almost no script changes to bring it up to date. Just saying…
Here he is in action - Leading Questions - Yes Prime Minister - as I said, entirely fictional…
🤔 - If you did have the answer to this question, what would it be?
Why am I hearing this now?