I think it’s safe to say that artificial intelligence is here to stay. Since its official launch in December 2022, ChatGPT by OpenAI, a free artificial intelligence tool, has become a powerful source for research and planning. And trust me, as a Team Leader, you don’t want to miss out on the plenty of opportunities and benefits of AI for your role. Especially when it comes to planning your one-on-one meetings to ensure the communication is clear and you receive the proper feedback from your people. So, I’m excited to share with you a complete guide to get started with this powerful tool!

Here’s what we’ll cover in this blog post: 

1. What’s AI and How to Get Started.
2. AI Benefits for Your Role as a Team Leader.
3. How to Use AI to Plan Your One-On-One Meetings With Your Team.
4. Prompts and Examples to Use for Your One-On-One Meetings.

Before moving forward, I highly recommend downloading my FREE Guide to Being An Effective Team Leader, where you’ll learn the five actionable steps new managers must take to gain clarity, build relationships, and lead their new teams effectively.

1. What’s AI, and How to Get Started?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a computer’s ability to perform tasks. Its main goal is to provide responses based on a prompt or input to help you find an answer or solution to a problem, research from past events, experiences, or facts. Even though it may sound like a human, it’s just a computer providing you with information and intelligence and performing a task based on a command.

There are plenty of AI tools that have become popular in the past year, but according to Forbes.com, here are a couple of the platforms you should be keeping on your radar as a team leader:

• ChatGPT by OpenAI
• Dall-E 2
• Stable Diffusion 2
• Lumen5

The one that I will use in this post for illustrative purposes will be ChatGPT. However, feel free to explore all the different options and choose what’s best for you.

How to get started with AI

After creating an account on the platform you choose, you want to follow the following three-step formula to get the most out of your search:

1. Give context: Feed the tool with specific information regarding your search. The more you go in-depth, the better the answer will be. 
2. Stay in the same chat discussion: When you hop into ChatGPT, you’ll notice that you have the option to create several discussions. My recommendation is that if you’re searching for information regarding a specific topic, like communication challenges in your team, you want to stay in the same channel or feed. That way, the computer will provide you with complete information and will follow up on your previous requests.
3. Create prompts for more effective results: Having specific examples of what you will be asking the AI to do will help your search be efficient and accurate.

I know you might have a lot of questions at this point on how to use this formula, so keep on reading so that I can show you a practical example to use for your one-on-one meetings.

2. AI Benefits for Your Role as a Team Leader.

Before jumping into the specifics, let’s explore some of the benefits of using artificial intelligence in your role as a team leader:

• Research Source: As a team leader, you have to do a lot of planning, so one great way to use AI to your advantage is through research. You can look for innovative forms of planning, brainstorming, and new improvement methods.
• Relevant Facts for Your Department: You can access historical data and statistics to draw conclusions about what actions are better to implement on your team.
• Minimizing Errors: Using AI as a support tool will help you reduce any error span and have accurate data to back up all your decisions.
• Enhancing your Experience: As a first-time team manager, sometimes you must navigate through uncharted territories, and I know it’s scary, but in my experience, having a tool such as AI to help you prepare and organize will give you the confidence to achieve your goals. 

What other AI benefits can you think of in your role as a manager? Comment below!

3. How to Use AI to Plan Your One-On-One Meetings With Your Team.

Now that you’re all caught up with the concept of AI and how to use it, let’s dive right into one of the most common pain points many of you have expressed: how to have a fruitful dialogue and use your best time when having one-on-one meetings with your team.

I think it’s safe to say we all know about the importance of getting closer to your people and being aware of everything happening in your department. But I know most of the time, we struggle to make these meetings productive because we’re unsure about what to ask or how to conduct them, and this is where AI walks in as the perfect planning and research tool to make sure the conversation keeps flowing, and we don’t miss anything.

Let’s narrow down a few options on how AI can benefit your one-on-one meetings:

• To figure out the most important topics that you should discuss with your team members. Use the three-step formula from above to make sure AI understands the team member’s goals, challenges, and priorities to help you identify the most important topics for you to discuss in your 1-1s.
• Look for open questions that generate a hearty dialogue. The more context you provide about your current team situation, the better the questions the tool will generate.
• Organize your ideas based on the personality type of each team member. Without getting into specifics, you can enter a general description of the person’s traits, strengths, and challenges so the tool can provide an accurate roadmap for your meeting.
• Research the best practices to ask for feedback. It will allow you to be prepared and have all the information to handle the meeting smoothly and get the desired response from your team members.
• Create a roadmap for follow-ups. After your meeting, make sure to feed the tool with context about how the meeting went and ask for the best practices to follow up based on what you talked about. It will give you a clear path and ensure you’re not missing anything.

If you love a good roadmap, in the New Manager Accelerator, my signature coaching program, I provide a clear structure for 1-1s. So make sure you check it out to excel in your role as a first-time manager!

All right, now it’s time to practice! Let’s look at some of the AI prompts you can use for your one-on-one meetings.

4. Prompts and Examples to Use for Your One-On-One Meetings.

Just so you know, a prompt is a command that you will feed to the AI tool with information about what you’re looking for. To give you a clearer idea, I will use three scenarios:

1. Having a one-on-one meeting with a difficult employee who has a complainer personality.
2. Following up on a request from a previous one-on-one meeting with your team’s “right hand” or go-to person.
3. Looking for ideas on how to provide feedback as an introverted manager.

#1. Having a one-on-one with a difficult employee who has a complainer personality.

First, log in to ChatGPT and type the following prompt:

I am a first-time team leader for 10 people, one of whom is constantly complaining about the work and always being negative about all the work initiatives. I’m about to have a one-on-one meeting with this person and want a clear idea of how the meeting should go. When approaching this personality type on my team, what questions should I ask? Generate a list of 10 to 20 questions I should ask to know the root cause of their problem.

Let’s identify the three elements of the formula mentioned above, shall we? 

• Context: We’re feeding AI with enough information about our department to get an idea of our situation, like having 10 team members, one of whom has a complainer personality. Plus, the computer knows we’re a first-time manager, so they provide the best recommendations about moving forward.
• Prompts: Having a short paragraph with an introduction, a request, and a command will give us the precise information to get the most accurate responses.
• Stay in the same chat: this is a general recommendation when it comes to having ideas for your follow-ups and team feedback. 

Now, check out AI’s reply to the above command:

Depending on your ultimate goal, certain things might not apply to your department. But this result can give you a general idea of what to ask and how to conduct your meeting to get the best results.

Loving AI so far? Let’s keep moving forward with a different example:

#2. Following up on a request from a previous one-on-one meeting with your team’s “right hand” or go-to person.

The ideal prompt for this scenario would be:

I am a team leader for 20 people, one of which is my right hand. She has a lot of traits that make her a good fit for the team, such as great communication skills, responsibility, and going the extra mile with our clients. I had a one-on-one meeting with her two weeks ago, and I want to follow up on the status of a presentation I requested that’s due in two days, but she hasn’t mentioned any updates. Can you generate a statement on what I should ask her about why she hasn’t reported any updates? The statement’s tone should be cordial yet direct, as I want to ensure I have this presentation on time.

To which ChatGPT replied:

Can you identify the three aspects of the formula we mentioned above? Comment below!

#3. Looking for ideas on how to provide feedback as an introverted manager.

The ideal prompt would look like this:

I’m a first-time manager of an IT department. I was recently promoted, and I’m excited about all the opportunities this new role will entail. However, I am an introvert, and I need to schedule one-on-one meetings with each person on my team to evaluate and provide feedback on their quarterly performance. Can you generate a list of the points I should have in mind to be prepared and ensure the conversation is not awkward but open and honest?

Chat GPT’s output is this:

So, there you have it, a complete guide that will help you keep the conversation going in your one-on-one meetings. Remember to follow this guide when preparing for your next 1-1, and save this article for future reference.