Welcome to the new Manager podcast.
I'm your host, Kim Nichol. Hello and welcome.
I am glad you're here and I hope you're doing well.
I'm continuing to learn and think about AI.
It's a huge topic. I've been really appreciative of
the messages and the comments that I've been getting from from
you and from some of your other Co listeners.
Learning how you are actually thinking about AI as a tool set
and using it is so interesting. So that offer still stands.
The invitation is still open. If you want to tell me about how
you are using AI and why, or if you're not using it at all and
why, tell me. I'm really curious to know.
Comment on the episode. If you listen through Spotify,
you know how to do that right in the app.
And otherwise you can leave me a message through LinkedIn or
through my website. So for today, I wanted to start
with something very specific and even simple.
And one of the reasons I'm excited about this is because I
find that when we're feeling overwhelmed and when there's a
lot of complexity, it's easy to go into a freeze mode.
And the thought might be I don't know where to start.
And so I won't start at all. Or it might just turn into kind
of like a shutdown and a withdrawal based on there's
already too much for me to do. And when we're feeling that
overwhelmed, it's like our curiosity can't come online.
So thinking about what something small that might be helpful for
understanding you know what this is and how to use that like
value those small little ideas or those small steps because
that is often I found the best way to make real progress when
you are learning about something new.
So the one idea that I want to share with you today that I
think will really make a difference in how you think
about AI and how you use it. This comes from an author, Ethan
Moloch, and he wrote a book called Co Intelligence Living
and Working with AI. This is on my book list.
I haven't read it yet, but I can tell you that there is one
passage in this book where he's laying out some guidelines or
rules for working with AI and one of them really stood out to
me. This is what the rule is.
He says treat AI like a person, but tell it what kind of person
it is to get the most useful output.
Give the AIA clear context for the outputs you need.
The more detail and insight you can provide in a prompt, the
better the AI can make the appropriate language token
predictions to generate useful outputs for your task.
So to kind of distill that to get back to this simple
principle, it's these two parts. Treat this tool like a person,
but tell it what kind of person it is.
Do you want it to be an expert? Do you want it to have a like an
encouraging demeanor or approach?
Like you might imagine it as your really smart, eager
assistant. What kind of person do you want
it to be? And I think that's so
interesting because when we're in the course and flow of
everyday life, we're simply meeting people as they are
appearing to us. We very rarely think, you know,
what kind of person do I want you to be?
We're more like, what kind of person are you and how are we
going to work together. The only time we might kind of
back up a step and ask that question is when we're thinking,
who do I need to talk to in order to address this kind of
issue? Do I need to talk to this kind
of expert? Do I need to talk to that kind
of person? Who is the person I talked to in
order to, you know, get some help with this kind of problem?
So when you're working with an AI tool, right, like Claude or
with ChatGPT are, you know, two of the very popular ones, you
can think about it as, OK, I'm going to talk to it like it's a
person, but I need to tell it what kind of person it is.
And this actually dovetails really nicely with a resource
that one of my students shared in an earlier cohort this year
in my communication strategies class.
And the student had shared with me this thing, this framework,
it's called a race prompt framework.
And R stands for role, A stands for action, C stands for
context, and E stands for execute.
And the idea is that this framework is a structured
approach for AI prompting. Like the thing you say that then
AI will respond to the prompt it responds to.
And it will guide you through these four steps of defining
what is the role that your AI should be, what is the action
like, the specific task that you want the AI to do?
What is the context? So what's the relevant
background and execute? What are the expectations for
the delivery, what you want the result to look like.
And so it's this, you know, systemic method to help organize
your thinking so you can give clear instructions to your AI
tool about what kind of person they are, what you want them to
do, what the bigger context is, and what exactly is the output
that you want. Now, what I think is really
interesting about this is I can see this as a way to help
develop your thinking skills when it comes to delegating to
regular humans. Like if you had to delegate work
to a human, it would also be really helpful for you to think
about what is their role here and maybe you need to clarify
for them. Here's the role I want you to
take with respect to this assignment or this project.
You want to be clear about the action.
What's the action you want this person to take at?
What's the bigger context? What is the additional
background that they will need to understand in order to be
effective at following through with your ask and then execute.
Be specific in in telling them what is the format or the style
or the expectations of what the final thing should look like.
You might even have an example. You might even say make it look
similar to this. So I think this is really
interesting when we think about, you know, kind of what does it
mean to be a manager in a world where AI is is also now here.
And there are lots of different ways to use it.
And one place to start is to ask yourself this question, OK, if
I'm going to treat this tool like a person, what kind of
person do I want it to be? And understanding that because
it requires you to slow down and be very intentional in thinking
about, oh, like this is what I'm looking for.
You can then bring that same skill set to working with
people, right? Like you can bring that same
process of thinking through how can I be specific in conveying
what I want, how I want this person to approach this thing.
I think it's interesting too, because of course, with AI we
get results generated very, very quickly.
And if you get a result you don't like, you can then respond
and say, oh, OK, I need to be more specific in giving this
instruction or giving this correction.
Try it again, but now do it this way or take this and change it
in this way. And so there is a little bit of
an engagement where it goes back and forth.
It is an iterative approach and it can actually happen very
quickly because the time it takes for your AI tool to
generate something that you can then see and evaluate will
happen a lot faster than with a human.
With a human, you might go through this process.
They say, I got it makes perfect sense.
They come back three days later and you're thinking, oh, OK, I,
I wasn't clear because the result you've given me is not
what I actually had in my mind, what I was expecting.
Let me see if I can explain this a different way.
So I think there's some interesting ways that using
these tools in this way can help prepare you to delegate and to
work with humans even more effectively.
Because ultimately it's just asking you to think more deeply
and more precisely about what are you asking for and how can
you provide the context or the examples?
How can you give that to whoever you want to take it and do
something with it in a way that will be effective.
So that's the idea I wanted to plant a seed for and offer a
resource for. For some of you, this might be
really basic. For some of you, this might be
really helpful. And you know, hopefully it kind
of falls somewhere in between. I think it's, it's neat,
especially when we think about communication.
Are there ways that you can practice where it feels low
stakes? And often with humans,
everything feels high stakes because there's a real human
that you're communicating with. And there can be the fear of if
I do this incorrectly, then I will, you know, make everything
harder for us, or I will create friction.
Or there can just be this fear of like, oh, I need to get it
right the first time. One of the things that I teach
in my course is process, not perfection.
So rather than, you know, trying to get the words exactly right
before you say them or before you write them, let's get a
really clear process in place and focus on that so that you
learn by doing rather than holding yourself to an
impossible perfection standard and then using that to kind of
create more anxiety and hesitation.
And with AI and this idea like talk to like a person, tell it
who you want it to be. That means you have to think who
do I want this role to be? What is the role that I want
this to be? My thinking is that this using
AI tools in this way will create more low stakes, fast response
scenarios for you to practice thinking and communicating in
this way. You know, on LinkedIn, sometimes
I see conversations happening in the feed and people will say,
oh, there's always like fear, right?
The incoming class of leaders, oh, they're not going to know
how to do anything because they're going to use AI for
everything or whatever. And I keep thinking, you know, I
think the people who get really good at using these AI tools,
they might be more ready for managing people because they've
become more practiced in thinking through these different
levels, right? Like, who do I want this to be?
What is the, you know, what is the role?
What is the task I need them to complete?
What is the context you need in order to complete that task?
What do I want the outcome to look like?
I mean, all of that is really useful when communicating with
humans too. And the sooner you start
developing that, you know, reflex and ability and skill,
the easier it becomes to use it in lots of different situations.
So that is what I wanted to offer today.
Continue to be curious. And if you want to learn with
me, then make sure that you sign up to get notified of the next
cohort. We're currently in a class, so
you can't join this current group, but get on the list so
you're notified of when the next cohort opens.
And of course, if you want one-on-one coaching and to work
with me more specifically focused on your goals and what
you'd like to experience and create in, you know, your life
and your work, then you can connect with me through my
website. There's information on how to do
that. All right, thank you so much for
listening. I hope you have a great week and
we'll talk to you next time. When you're more effective at
work, you're happier in your life.
And when you're happier in your life, you're more effective at
work. I can help.
Go to my website, kimnickel.com and sign up for a coaching
consult. It can get better.