Effective communication lies at the heart of successful managerial endeavors. Whether articulating a vision, providing feedback, or fostering collaboration, a manager's communication ability makes a huge impact.
AI tools such as ChatGPT can be valuable in improving your communication skills. And to help us learn some of the dos and don'ts when using AI to support communications, we have Helen Dayen, an executive coach for fifteen years.
She shares some valuable insights on how to get optimal results from ChatPGT to help you better communicate with your colleagues.
Improving Communication with ChatGPT
ChatGPT's ability to simulate natural language conversations makes it an excellent tool for supporting communication.
It can be a virtual thought partner, allowing you to practice challenging conversations, presentations, or negotiations.
You can experiment with it using different approaches and receive immediate feedback, helping you quickly refine your communication strategies.
One example that Helen Dayen mentioned on the podcast is how two of her founder clients–both coming from different backgrounds, finance and engineering–were able to improve their communication with the help of ChatGPT.
She noticed that even when these two founders thought they were communicating clearly, they ended up frustrated by their conversations. Because they were coming from different perspectives (finance and engineering), they were essentially speaking two different languages.
To help bridge that gap, Helen advised one of them to try ChatGPT and use a specific prompt to translate what they want to say based on that other person's standpoint. It goes like this: I want to communicate [topic] to my co-founder. Help me reframe it from his [background perspective].
Now, if you're a marketing manager and want to relay to your team the simplified version of one of your C-suite meetings, instead of throwing around some big words, you could type in ChatGPT something like:
I need to communicate this [topic] to my team that operates at this [level of knowledge]. Help me simplify this [C-suite information].
The beauty of AI tools is that you can modify it specific to the situation. There's room to play around with those prompts and try different versions until you find the ones that work for you.
But what's really the key to crafting a better ChatGPT prompt that quickly provides appropriate responses?
Tips for Writing Better ChatGPT Prompts
First, Helen promotes a smart and effective way of using AI to help leaders and managers like you be better WITHOUT taking too much of your time. To make the most out of AI tools such as ChatGPT, she emphasizes that it all starts with writing better prompts.
How you prompt the AI tool is crucial in achieving appropriate answers.
I've listed some of Helen's best tips for writing ChatGPT prompts below.
1. Communicate to AI how you would call a friend for advice. People think of AI as a machine, so they don't communicate with it the way they would with humans. But if you approach ChatGPT like you're talking to a human–describing the specifics of a situation you want clarity on–then you'll get a response as close to what you'll get from a friend.
Remember, the more you prompt AI with specific information relevant to the situation, the better.
2. Be mindful of the narrowing, especially in a continuous chat with ChatGPT. AI is learning from your interaction. As you feed it information, it’s selecting what sources to scour for responses. The scope becomes narrower over time, so if you start to see its responses are way off from what you’re looking for–it's already missing the point–you might want to abandon that conversation and start with a new chat.
3. Spend some time understanding the other person's perspective. More often than not, we ask ourselves what we want to get out of a conversation. However, AI can help us think from the other person’s perspective.
Instead of focusing on, "What do I want to get out of this?" ask yourself, "How do they see this situation?" or “What do I know about this person’s perspective or preferences?”. This allows you to include both your vantage point and the other person’s when feeding ChatGPT the prompt.
AI can do so much more than brainstorm ideas, and it gets better as technology advances. Now, it's up to you to leverage the technology that we have now so you can level up your skills and become a better modern manager.
If you want an in-depth discussion about this topic, listen to my entire conversation with Helen Dayen HERE and learn how you can become a better communicator using AI technology.
Connect with Helen Dayen
- Follow her on Instagram here
- Check her out on LinkedIn here
- Visit her website for more information here
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