Leaders are often trapped "inside the box" of their own assumptions when making critical decisions. By providing AI with context and assigning it an expert role (e.g., "world-class chief product officer"), you can prompt it to ask probing questions that reveal your biases and lead to more objective, defensible outcomes.

Instead of asking AI for answers, command it to ask you questions. Use the "Context, Role, Interview, Task" (CRIT) framework to turn AI into a thought partner. The "Interview" step, where AI probes for deeper context, is the key to generating non-obvious, high-value strategies.

Users who treat AI as a collaborator—debating with it, challenging its outputs, and engaging in back-and-forth dialogue—see superior outcomes. This mindset shift produces not just efficiency gains, but also higher quality, more innovative results compared to simply delegating discrete tasks to the AI.

To get beyond generic advice, instruct ChatGPT's voice mode to act as a challenging mentor. Prime it with a specific framework like the Theory of Constraints (TOC) and provide your resource limitations. This structured dialogue forces the AI to challenge your assumptions and generate realistic, actionable solutions instead of pleasantries.

A powerful workflow is to explicitly instruct your AI to act as a collaborative thinking partner—asking questions and organizing thoughts—while strictly forbidding it from creating final artifacts. This separates the crucial thinking phase from the generative phase, leading to better outcomes.

The most significant risk of AI is abdicating human judgment and becoming a mediocre content generator. Instead, view AI as a collaborative partner. Your role as the leader is to define the prompt, provide context, challenge biases, and apply discernment to the output, solidifying your own strategic value.

Treat advanced AI systems not as software with binary outcomes, but as a new employee with a unique persona. They can offer diverse, non-obvious insights and a different "chain of thought," sometimes finding issues even human experts miss and providing complementary perspectives.

Instead of using AI as a compliant assistant, program it to be a challenging 'sparring partner.' Ask it to find holes in your logic or anticipate all the critical questions your CEO might ask. This transforms it from a content generator into a powerful strategic tool for preparation.

A leader's most valuable use of AI isn't for automation, but as a constant 'thought partner.' By articulating complex business, legal, or financial decisions to an AI and asking it to pose clarifying questions, leaders can refine their own thinking and arrive at more informed conclusions, much like talking a problem out loud.