Editorial
For all the hand-wringing about AI — and there certainly has been a tidal wave of hype — one facet doesn’t get as much press: Using a large language model like ChatGPT as a thinking partner and sounding board. When viewed solely from a professional development perspective, especially for senior leaders who need efficiency, competitive intelligence and case studies, AI emerges as a fast track toward better leadership.
ChatGPT and other AI platforms are a convenient option to get personalized business advice, especially when you need immediate help or a reliable sounding board that doesn’t worry about interoffice politics and won’t get tired. While ChatGPT shouldn’t be your only mentor, the AI tool can provide valuable advice for becoming a more inclusive, effective leader.
The Case for AI on Your Shoulder
You can train ChatGPT to ask questions that invite you to reflect on interactions with your team, serve as a role-playing partner for challenging conversations, and suggest skill-building exercises to increase your expertise. It can also help you consider challenges more thoroughly by posing questions, suggesting possible tactics and providing pros and cons of different options. While ChatGPT can’t do the thinking for you, it can prompt you to think more deeply and with greater reflection.
Experimenting with AI as a coaching partner also elicits actionable insights on leadership. The bonus is that the more you use the application, the better you will become at crafting prompts leading to the desired results.
Imagine you are facing the launch of an important product design and its effect on sales and marketing. The stakes are huge and lots of people are depending on you for the best answers. If you’re comfortable and experienced with ChatGPT, you can run a small-scale, strategic pilot project to test different scenarios and potential outcomes. When we think about how valuable AI has been in writing code and other technical fields, the logical conclusion is that it will gradually become just as important on the creative side of organizations. Applying ChatGPT to these kinds of mini-projects will allow you to test the usefulness of AI in a real-world scenario.
Many sectors have already seen productivity gains through AI, yet many senior executives are still unsure how to best implement the technology into their workflow. The recent PwC Global CEO Survey, for example, reveals that CEOs believe AI will lead to “huge productivity benefits,” yet only 32% have broadly adopted it.
As you better understand how to use the technology as part of your professional development, you will be able to identify other areas of your organization where AI can deliver immediate impact.
Related Article: Use AI Like an Assistant, Not a Replacement
How to Use ChatGPT as a Business Coach and Learning Partner
To get the best results, it’s important to first train the AI model for your specific situation. Remember, as you interact with the application, be vague enough to guard your privacy — and that of your business — but detailed enough for ChatGPT to provide useful information.
A starter prompt might be something like this:
You are a seasoned business coach with experience advising corporate leaders, providing them with advice and feedback based on their real business needs. You combine real-world business experience with coaching skills, such as active listening and the ability to ask powerful questions. I am a [describe your role and your industry], and I would like to partner with you, so I can become a more effective leader. Do you understand?
Or, if you are a leader who wants to build a more inclusive workplace, consider this prompt:
Assume the role of a business coach with a deep understanding of diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging and how DEIB impacts modern business. I am [describe your role]. Give me one practical step I can take back to my leadership team this week to help us start improving culture.
Once you establish the persona of your AI coach, you can ask specific questions depending on your needs. Sample questions might include, “How can I provide better feedback to my team, so I get the results I want?” or “I’d like to improve my listening skills, so I can be more present for my team. Can you give me techniques that will help me focus on not just the words spoken, but also on cues like tone, body language and the unspoken messages?” Your new business coach can also suggest other ways you can use its expertise to learn and grow your skills.
To train the AI further on your specific needs, keep all your business coaching conversations in a single query tab/window. That way, ChatGPT can use your feedback to finetune its responses to your questions. You can also provide the program with a general overview of who you are and what you want to accomplish, then ask it to use that persona in all future interactions.
As you learn, track your insights. Whether you improve your personal leadership style or you understand how to use ChatGPT more effectively, both information sets allow you to consider next steps. AI might provide the initial set of questions and ideas you want to address with a professional executive coach or other adviser. Another outcome from your exploration with AI may be to help your team develop best practices for integrating AI technology into their workflow.
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Beyond ChatGPT: How to Maintain Your Professional Growth
Chat GPT is a convenient tool, but just one way to achieve personal and professional growth. In particular, young professionals, emerging leaders and mid-level managers might use AI as a starting point to increase knowledge in their field, what’s happening in their industry and how global trends could affect their organizations and careers. For these rising leaders, establishing ChatGPT or another AI model as a tool is probably a good starting point. As it evolves, it will spark continuous learning and a growth mindset, both hallmarks of the most successful leaders.
As you use ChatGPT, it will become clear that in its current iteration the learning system has shortcomings. There are discussions that require a professional, like an executive coach, who understands the emotional components of leadership, as well as the complex concerns that executives face. And when it comes to specialized topics like inclusive communication or culture-centric leadership, a well-structured training course might be a much more efficient and effective option.
While ChatGPT will (probably) never replace a human with deep experience, let’s focus on what it can do right now: Help you think differently and more creatively about immediate challenges you face. As you experiment, you will also gain knowledge that will help you leverage this powerful tool for your benefit and that of your organization. All leaders can gain from an additional sounding board and thought partner, why not see where the experiment takes you?
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