I am a strong advocate for the value of coaching. Engaging with an experienced mentor in your field can offer immense benefits.
However, traditional coaching can also be prohibitively expensive for many.
That’s where language models like ChatGPT come in. I'll guide you on how to harness ChatGPT as your leadership coach, providing some of the benefits of traditional coaching at a fraction of the cost.
If you are looking for coaching in a field other than leadership, this guide can also be very helpful. Just change some of the instructions and knowledge to better match your area.
However, it's important to recognize the limitations of this approach. While a GPT coach can serve as a solid sounding board, equipped with a wealth of principles, ideas, and information, it lacks the creative thinking, empathy, and out-of-the-box ideas that a human coach offers. One inherent downside is its tendency to echo your own beliefs. Awareness of this bias is crucial, yet it can still be a powerful tool if used judiciously.
I personally use my GPT coach daily for quick feedback on ideas, reviewing proposals, exploring alternatives, and critiquing my work. Nonetheless, I recommend using this tool as a second step. Initiating your process with independent thinking encourages depth and thoughtfulness, preventing reliance on the tool that could stifle personal insight.
With these considerations in mind, let’s explore how to effectively integrate a GPT coach into your leadership development strategy.
ChatGPT Plus
The initial step is to ensure you have access to either ChatGPT Plus or an Enterprise version of ChatGPT. The free version does not include access to custom GPTs.
Create a GPT
GPTs are tailored versions of ChatGPT, customized by users for specific tasks or topics by integrating specific instructions, knowledge, and capabilities.
To explore GPTs, simply click on the “Explore GPTs” button located in the left navigation bar within ChatGPT. This action will direct you to the relevant page.
Go ahead and click the “+ Create” button in the top right corner.
You should now see the experience of creating a GPT.
I personally prefer using the “Configure” feature because it provides a clearer understanding of how the GPT is created. Simply click on “Configure,” and you’ll be presented with a variety of options to tailor your experience.
Configure Your GPT
Let’s walk through how you can use the various options to configure a GPT to help you as a leadership coach.
Name
Leadership Coach
Description
A custom GPT configured with my specific leadership knowledge and preferences, designed to serve as a virtual AI coach.
Instructions
This is where it gets more interesting. At this stage, you can input a set of instructions that this GPT will consistently follow. Below is an example to guide you. Consider it a template: adapt and adjust it according to your specific needs and principles. Take everything in italics and enter it into the “Instructions” box. We'll explore this in greater detail below.
Purpose: This GPT is tailored to assist tech leaders in navigating the complexities of their roles, focusing on strategic decision-making, team management, and personal development. It will provide real-time advice, facilitate problem-solving, and support continuous learning.
Primary Functions:
Strategic Advice: Offer insights on technology trends, business strategies, and innovation processes.
Team Management: Guide leaders in building, developing, and retaining high-performing teams.
Personal Development: Help in cultivating leadership skills and professional growth.
Key Resources:
Books:
"The Hard Thing About Hard Things" by Ben Horowitz
"Measure What Matters" by John Doerr
"The Lean Startup" by Eric Ries
"Radical Candor" by Kim Scott
Articles from:
Harvard Business Review
McKinsey Insights
TechCrunch
The Verge
Podcasts:
"Masters of Scale" with Reid Hoffman
"How I Built This" with Guy Raz
User Interaction Guidelines:
Understand Context: Before providing advice, the GPT should gather enough context about the tech leader’s specific situation, company culture, and the industry landscape.
Actionable Insights: Ensure that all advice is actionable, with clear steps and expected outcomes outlined.
Confidentiality: Maintain a high standard of privacy and confidentiality, ensuring that all interactions are secure and user data is protected.
Feedback Mechanisms:
Periodic Surveys: Regularly collect user feedback to improve the GPT’s responses and ensure they are aligned with user needs.
Adaptation to User Preferences: Learn from past interactions to tailor future advice more effectively to individual leadership styles and preferences.
Ethical Considerations:
Promote ethical leadership and decision-making, referencing the IEEE Code of Ethics for professional conduct guidance.
Avoid biases in AI responses, especially in sensitive areas such as employee relations, hiring practices, and performance evaluations.
Performance Metrics:
User satisfaction ratings
Frequency and duration of interactions
Impact assessment through user feedback on the applicability of the advice
This involves quite a bit of detail! Initially, we define its purpose and outline the primary functions. You might add more depending on your needs, but these three provide a solid foundation.
Next—and I consider this critical—direct it to key resources. This customization empowers your GPT to align with your principles and best practices. I’ve included books, articles, and podcasts in my list, but feel free to explore other creative options.
User Interaction Guidelines: These are essential for setting clear expectations on how your GPT will interact. While not always flawless, these guidelines help the GPT generally behave in anticipated ways. This extends to Ethical Considerations, which I believe are crucial when interacting with large language models; it’s important to specify your expectations, although the actual impact might be minimal to how these GPTs currently respond.
Feedback and Metrics: Specifying these expectations could potentially enhance the GPT’s performance over time. Although I’m skeptical about their current effectiveness, it remains an area with potential for future impact.
Conversation Starters
In this section, you can pre-set a few conversation starters that will appear when you open a chat window with this GPT. Consider these three:
Discuss a recent leadership challenge: Let's reflect on a recent leadership challenge I've faced and discuss strategies that could help manage similar situations in the future. This reflection could also reveal lessons learned from the experience.
Explore a strategic decision: I’m currently evaluating a strategic decision and would appreciate exploring its potential impacts together. Your different perspective or a new framework could aid my decision-making process.
Shape and maintain team culture: Help me assess what has been effective (and what hasn’t) in shaping my team's culture. Let's discuss how I envision the evolution of our workplace culture.
You'll notice these starters are designed to encourage reflection, enhancing the coaching capabilities of our GPT. They are intended to prompt deeper engagement with our thoughts, facilitated by the LLM.
I recommend using a GPT coach not to make decisions for you, but as a tool to enhance your reflective thinking and self-guidance. While it cannot replace the depth of experience an industry veteran offers, with well-tuned instructions and thoughtful questions, it can serve as a valuable guide, helping you to explore ideas, refine your thinking, and ultimately act as your own coach.
Knowledge
When you initiate a conversation or pose a question, the GPT first contextualizes the query to grasp the specific aspect being discussed. It then consults its knowledge base to retrieve the most pertinent information, which might include pulling direct quotes, summarizing insights, or referencing relevant case studies and best practices.
You can enhance your GPT’s direct knowledge base by uploading files in the Knowledge section.
Think of the instructions provided earlier as a way to guide and effectively prompt your GPT. The knowledge you upload serves as a source of information for the GPT to draw upon in order to provide accurate answers, all while adhering to your specific instructions.
While ChatGPT is trained on a vast array of general information, adding more specific knowledge will focus your GPT more sharply, giving it direct access to the information most relevant to your needs. Here are some types of information you might consider uploading:
Leadership Books and Summaries:
Summaries and key insights from influential leadership books. These summaries provide condensed wisdom that can be referenced quickly during coaching sessions.
Case Studies:
Detailed case studies from both successful and unsuccessful tech projects or companies. These should highlight strategic decisions, leadership challenges, innovation management, and the implications of those actions. Examples might include case studies on the introduction of new technologies at companies like Amazon, Google, and smaller startups.
Research Papers and Articles:
A collection of research papers and articles from respected journals and thought leaders on topics such as change management, digital transformation, and agile methodologies. These documents can provide a theoretical backbone and contemporary insights that enhance the advice the GPT provides.
Podcast Episodes and Video Talks:
Transcripts or summaries of relevant podcast episodes and TED Talks that focus on technology, leadership, and innovation. This could include talks by industry leaders or experts who discuss emerging trends, leadership philosophies, or personal development.
Best Practice Guides and Toolkits:
Practical guides and toolkits that offer step-by-step instructions or frameworks for various leadership tasks, such as conducting effective one-on-ones, managing remote teams, and implementing feedback systems. For example, toolkits on how to use OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) effectively or guides on fostering diversity and inclusion in tech spaces.
Regulatory and Ethical Guidelines:
Documents detailing legal or ethical guidelines relevant to tech leadership, such as data privacy laws, employment practices, and ethical AI use. These ensure that the advice given is not only strategic but also compliant with regulatory standards.
Personal Development Materials:
Resources aimed at personal growth, such as stress management techniques, work-life balance strategies, and leadership development exercises. These can help leaders maintain their effectiveness and wellbeing in the demanding tech environment.
Capabilities
I can't see a reason not to enable all three capabilities for your GPT. Unless there are specific restrictions, it's generally best to equip your GPT with the most comprehensive set of tools available to maximize its effectiveness.
Actions
Besides the built-in capabilities mentioned earlier, you can also empower your GPT by defining custom actions through one or more APIs. This allows GPTs to integrate external data or interact with the real world.
We won’t cover this in the current tutorial, but should you wish to connect your GPT to external APIs, like your internal knowledge base, this is how you would set it up.
Go Live!
With your custom GPT now configured, simply click “Create” in the top right corner to activate it!
You can access it anytime from the navigation bar on the left. Whenever you use this GPT, it will operate based on the instructions and custom knowledge you've configured.
Should you need to update your GPT, click the down arrow next to the GPT’s name in the top left corner. You’ll find an option to edit the GPT, which will take you back to the configuration page.
I hope this demonstration has shown how, as a leader, you can harness the capabilities of LLMs to enhance your effectiveness at work. It’s a common misconception that LLMs don’t add value to managerial and leadership roles, but I strongly disagree. My leadership coach GPT has become an indispensable tool, helping me become a more effective and reflective leader. Often, the challenge isn't a lack of knowledge—it’s remembering and effectively applying that knowledge to grow and improve. A GPT coach can guide you through this process more effectively than you might manage on your own.
However, it’s important to remember that this is just another tool in your arsenal. Don’t over-rely on it or assume it offers more than it does.
Or, if you're feeling bold, why not connect your GPT to your Slack and take a vacation? You might just find you’ve replaced yourself! 😉
Did you find these insights on using LLMs in leadership roles helpful? If so, please give this article a ❤️ and share your thoughts in the comments below! I'd love to hear how you envision integrating AI tools into your leadership practices or any questions you might have about the process.