Discover this One Leadership Hack That Saves You Hours

What would you do with an extra 30–60 minutes in your day?

In this One Simple Thing episode, Leading People host, Gerry Murray, explores how AI can give leaders back precious time - not by taking over, but by taking the heavy lifting out of your writing tasks. 

You'll be able to free up time for more important leadership tasks. 

Whether it’s an email, a proposal, or a tricky LinkedIn post, learn how to use AI to create smart starting points, enhance your clarity, and even communicate across multiple languages.

If you're someone who doesn't enjoy writing, then this episode may even be a life saver! 

Find out how Gerry lost a job to AI and didn't mind! 

Curious to learn more?

🎧 Listen now to this Leadership time-saving tip

This is part of our mini-series on how to use AI to support your leadership, without losing your human touch.

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Transcript

Finding Extra Time in Your Day

Using AI for Smart Starting Points

Speaker 1 0:05

Welcome to Leading People with me, gerry Marais. This week it's One Simple Thing, where in each episode, I share a quick, actionable tip to help you bring out the best in yourself and others. One Simple Thing is created for young leaders, but hey, us older folks can still learn a thing or two. Ask my dog. He's learned a few new tricks recently. Here's a question for you what could you do with an extra 30 to 60 minutes in your day? If you're like most leaders I work with, you'd spend it on something that really matters Thinking time, a conversation with your team, or even just breathing space between meetings, but that time often disappears into admin, repetitive tasks or messages that just take too long to write. Today's one simple thing is about how to save time by getting AI to do more of the heavy lifting for you, your team and even across different languages. So let's explore how to use AI to create smart starting points that save time.

Create Your Own Prompt Library

Speaker 1 1:26

When you start with a blank page, whether it's for an email, a proposal or a LinkedIn post, it can feel slow and draining. That's because you're activating your brain's executive functions at full throttle. But what if you didn't need to start from scratch? But what if you didn't need to start from scratch. Instead, prompt AI with what you want to say, your tone and who's it for, and it will generate a first draft in seconds. And you can stay in control, because you edit and finesse the text, but you're no longer stuck staring at the screen. Perhaps you're not a confident writer? Then speak your thoughts. You don't have to write your AI prompt. You can say it, open the voice input and speak your message out loud, just like you'd explain it to a colleague. Gpt will turn your spoken thoughts into a clear draft that you can tweak. And this is especially helpful if, like my wife, you work in multiple languages. She often briefs the GPT in her native German, but asks for a draft in English, french or Dutch all languages that she speaks fluently. And here's the real kicker she used to run all her English emails by me. I was her editor-in-chief. Now I've been made redundant by AI. But hey, I'm not bitter, I'm just glad I don't have to fix her syntax anymore.

Speaker 1 3:06

And here's a bonus tip for you Keep your own prompt library. If you often ask AI to write a certain kind of message, say a project update or performance feedback, save your best prompts in a swipe file. You can reuse them anytime and even share them with your team. Want to speed things up even more? Set up a library of your most used prompts as shortcuts on your phone or laptop. That way, your AI assistant is just a click away. Or, if you're feeling particularly adventurous and have the paid version of ChatGPT, you can program in your own prompts, and you don't have to be a software programmer to do this.

Closing Thoughts and Next Episode

Speaker 1 3:56

So what would you do with the time you get back? That's the real magic here. The more time AI saves you, the more present you can be for your people. Now that's a leadership trait worth amplifying. And that's another One Simple Thing. Thanks for tuning in. Remember, small steps can lead to big changes. Test out this one simple thing and notice how it transforms your day. Let me know how you get on. Reach out on LinkedIn and connect with me. Mention the podcast and if you'd like to learn more one simple things, then subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast channel and follow our linkedin leading people page. In our next episode of one simple thing, we'll explore another easy way to be a great leader by bringing out the best in yourself and those around you. And in between. You can check out one of my longer conversations with leading people about yes, you've guessed it, leading people. So until then, keep exploring and stay curious.