An Introduction to ChatGPT: A Guide for Team Leaders
Tech Tips for Retail Leaders
ChatGPT is quite the topic these days. It seems like anywhere you look, watch videos, or read articles, there is something about ChatGPT. Some frame this as a huge time saver, others see it as an invaluable research tool, others are looking at it for the cheating element, and still others theorize that it is the start to the artificial intelligence takeover. The reality seems like this, as with most other things, when used appropriately and in moderation can be a really useful tool for almost anyone. It certainly does begin to lay a foundation for how computers and AI can become a valuable resource for the future.
What is ChatGPT
ChatGPT is an AI-powered chatbot that you can converse with on a variety of topics related to almost any field or industry. It uses natural language processing to understand your questions and provide you with relevant, accurate answers. It feels as though you are having a conversation with someone, and they are providing responses that are gathered from millions of potential ideas and sources.
When I asked ChatGPT how to describe what it is, I received this response:
I am ChatGPT, a language model developed by OpenAI. I use natural language processing techniques and machine learning algorithms to understand and generate human-like responses to a wide range of questions and prompts. I have been trained on a large corpus of text data, allowing me to draw on a vast array of knowledge and information to provide informative and engaging responses. Whether you're looking for information, advice, or just a friendly chat, I'm here to help!
The user interface with ChatGPT is simple. Once you create an account (you can use your Google credential if you choose), you begin by typing in your request. The more specific you are in your question, the better your responses will be. General questions will give you broader answers, and like doing a Google search, the keywords will lead to the results. However, using the AI, instead of getting a list of websites, you will get a detailed response with information already curated for you. For example, search Google for “ideas on leadership development”. You will get an endless list of links to websites and articles.
Ask ChatGPT for “ideas on leadership development”, and you’ll get a list of actions and activities you can engage in for developing your leadership skills.
You can even have ChatGPT draft you an email inviting someone from your team to the discussion time for their performance review.
Both of these have their benefits depending on your need and use case. With ChatGPT, you can continue to ask questions, get additional information, and essentially have a conversation about the subject until you get what you’re looking for.
From a retail leader perspective, you can use ChatGPT to gain insights into emerging technologies, consumer behavior, market trends, and more. It can help you improve your customer experience, optimize your operations, and provide you with new ideas and perspectives. I see this as especially helpful in doing research for self-development, or troubleshooting difficult situations you may face in your role day-to-day. There are plenty of useful examples to give you an idea of how ChatGPT could become a time saver, idea generator, or developmental tool for you and your team.
Performance Reviews
Obviously, an AI tool doesn’t know your team, what they do, how they are performing, or what their full potential may be. But often I have found that leaders know these things about their team, but not always how to capture that for the regular written performance feedback systems they may use in their workplace. Below is an example of what providing ChatGPT with some key information about a team member can do in producing a more complete performance feedback entry.
Idea Generation
There are endless uses for ChatGPT on having it assist with producing ideas. You can essentially have a brainstorming session with your AI partner using this mindset. Perhaps you want to do some team building with your team. You could ask the AI to provide ideas on team building for seasoned retail leaders. It will provide you a list of ideas you can explore. Then, you can ask for a more detailed description of ones that you’re interested in. You can ask it for different ideas. Give it more parameters; for example, we want to be outside for this activity. Again, the options are only limited by your imagination.
I think this can be useful for meeting planning. Decide what topics you may want to cover, and then give the AI several things you know you wish to discuss with your team. Let the computer do the formatting and initial word generation from your thoughts.
Micro Learning Sessions
Perhaps as part of your next huddle, conference call, or team meeting, you want to share some training ideas on a specific subject. ChatGPT can assist you with building the knowledge base, as well as helping to get ideas on what you might do to deliver the message.
In the above example, I asked about ideas for the training topic. Then, I followed up within that same chat to get ideas specifically on how activities to share that information. Within a single chat, the bot stays aligned to what the subject is. It already knows what you are talking about and continues on the same conversation with you. In my experimentation, I have gone several levels down with questions and the AI stays in context with the original input and is aware of what it has already provided you. It is quite impressive.
Microsoft is Onboard
While the company behind ChatGPT (OpenAI) may be smaller and just getting started, they do have big supporters. Microsoft has taken a significant role in investing in this, and is now incorporating it into their products. Most recently, and probably most notable right now, is the introduction of the ChatGPT engine into Bing, their search engine. This roll-out is still in progress, but when you use Bing for your search engine, through Edge (browser), you may have the ability to use ChatGPT within the search engine. Tom’s Guide has an excellent article explaining this initial launch.
Artificial Intelligence has been a part of science fiction for decades. And, AI takes on many forms. We all have likely experienced it in some form over the past few years. If you’ve opened a chat session with a company online, you have likely experienced some AI within that process. Many of the initial questions to help route you are driven by AI, versus a real person. Then, once your situation is narrowed down, it can connect you with a human to answer the more detailed questions.
I think there are many potential uses for leaders to begin incorporating AI and something like ChatGPT into daily routines as well. I am just at the beginning of my exploration of this and have already found some great uses. I do use ChatGPT to research new articles I am working on and gather ideas for where I can get further information on different subjects. I have it suggest ideas for article titles, search terms, text social media posts, or provide a summary of the article to verify that I have hit (and called out) the key points. Finally, this is clearly going to become part of the toolkit for the future of many different businesses. The more we can learn and understand about this now, the more we will be ready for this when it arrives in a more mainstream way.
How will you put ChatGPT to work for you?
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