I’ve spent the past nearly two years using AI in my daily work. Now that I’m more comfortable, I’m also encouraging my team to use AI as part of their regular cadence. The other week someone asked me about using AI as a people leader. The person was feeling tension about how to use it in a leadership capacity, which is less focused on the daily operations of a MarComm leader.
That conversation is the basis for today’s post. This work is often lonely, and I wrestle with decisions and feedback. I have a group of gals that I regularly connect with. However, it’s nice to be able to have a constant partner to discuss and work through challenges with it.
Today’s Partner
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Ways AI Helps Me as a Leader
This week’s post highlights five ways that I have used AI in my MarComm work leading and developing teams. These are just a few of the ways I’ve used the tool over the past year. In each case, I find that AI doesn’t replace my thoughts or the hard work of leading a team, but it does allow me to be more prepared and more consistent in my approach.
Crucial Conversations
As a leader, I sometimes need to have tough conversations with employees. This could be about changes to the organizational structure or performance-based conversations. Either way, they are tough. I have used AI to help me with those conversations. I’ve told it the issue and some basic traits about the person I’m having the conversation with. Then, I’ve asked AI to role-play the conversation with me. It’s helped me assess where the message needs to be refined and also how to best consider the conversation from the other person’s point of view. I used this pretty heavily over the summer in conversations related to reorganization, and it was really helpful to make sure I was being consistent but also crafting a message that aligned with the person receiving it.
Preparing for One-on-Ones
I have revamped my one-on-one agendas this year with the support of AI and others. I want to move from just a list of projects being worked on to also focusing on how I can better prepare someone for their own career aspirations. I used AI to help me brainstorm a new agenda model that includes discussion of career aspirations, goals, and still leaves space for current projects. It also helped me to develop better questions when people are stuck on something. I want to strike the balance of helping remove the barrier, but I also want to coach the team to handle things on their own. AI helped me pulse-check to make sure I’m striking that balance each week.
Performance Reviews
As a leader, I try to spend time on the performance reviews for my team and make sure they’re getting honest feedback from me. In giving reviews this year, I used the tool to help me review my notes from ongoing one-on-ones to make sure I hadn’t missed key themes. Then, I used the tool to help refine my language and feedback. I focused on getting the initial thoughts down, and AI helped polish the language into a more professional tone. Finally, I ran all of the notes back through and asked AI to review them to ensure that I was consistent across employees in how I gave feedback and suggestions for improvement.
Vision Into Action
As a leader, I am a visionary/abstract thinker and tend to think in big, grand ideas. That’s a great trait for a leader, but it can be challenging for an employee. I find that I use AI to take those big ideas and help me break them into actionable steps that the team can then understand and deliver on. Before AI, I would have a big idea of let’s do a licensed vendor fair (happened for the third time this week) and didn’t have a good mechanism for how to execute it. The team would feel overwhelmed by how to carry out a big vision without small practical steps. I’ve found AI is great at taking big ideas and breaking them into steps and checklists that a team can execute. At the same time, this builds context for the team and in the future they need less day-to-day help on these kinds of big projects.
Thinking Through Decisions
Sometimes the seat at the top of the MarComm chart can be lonely. As we’ve added people and layers to our organizational chart, feedback and questions don’t flow as easily. People are sometimes intimidated to ask a question, or they don’t want to give feedback. I’m working on the culture to make sure that doesn’t become an issue. However, it’s also important to make sure that blind spots and gaps get addressed. One way I do that is using AI. I regularly put my plan into the tool and ask it to help me think through what is missing. Additionally, I’ve asked it to review what I have or a decision I’m contemplating and think through it with me. I’ve found that both of these help me to find gaps in my judgment and help make my plans stronger.
Working Smarter
AI helps me to work smarter in the people management side of a MarComm leader. Again, it’s important to reiterate this does not mean giving up the thoughts and the leadership piece. Instead, I’m using AI as a thought partner to help assess gaps, practice conversations, and build confidence in my decisions.
These are a few of the ways I am using the tool to help me be better at leading a team. What are ways that work for you?
Feel free to drop your ideas in the chat!
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