#157 - Bot or Not, It's Communication 101

Welcome back to an AI-forward edition with a twist.

Prof Mike here for this post-Super Bowl edition of OTF. I hope you all enjoyed the event and your teams / pool entries / etc. fared better than mine.

While anxiously awaiting Sunday’s start time, I went down a typical scroll-rabbit-hole and came upon something interesting. It was from this guy who teaches AI on Substack. Normally I find his content too dry and inaccessible for my liking, but this one stood out to me because it was right up my alley.

Literally.

He might as well have taken my class and spit it back to me from an AI-perspective.

The obvious takeaway is —

People think AI makes communication skills obsolete, but to be good at AI you need strong communication skills

— but there’s much more to it.

Let’s go deep.

So this is the post that caught my attention:

If you want to communicate better with AI (fewer misunderstandings, more efficient exchanges), it’s good info, and the reason I know this is because it’s how good communicators communicate with people.

1. Set up a Project —> When he states “Write Custom Instructions,” it simply emphasizes is that if you’re clear, specific, and consistent, your audience will develop better understanding over time. Bot or not.
   

2. Turn on Extended Thinking —> I have no professorial connection to make for this, but I do have a tip: certain LLMs let you literally turn on extended thinking as a toggle setting while for others you have to add it to your prompt. Something like “reason through this carefully…”
   

3. Turn on Web Search —> “Force AI to Cite, not Generate” is what stands out here: when presenting, you should back up claims with evidence, and when listening, you should force others to back up their claims.
   
   I also laughed when he said “Use when you need accuracy”…when does one need inaccuracy???
   

4.  Upload a Reference —> Most of this is straight from the curriculum: use examples (or references/models) when you can; “show, don’t tell” is every writing teacher’s favorite cliche; and don’t over-write.
   

5. Define Success, Not Steps —> All about having a clear purpose (and audience) in mind. The best communicators always have both.
   

6. Specify Constraints —> This is all about things you should be thinking about whenever you speak or write - audience (again), style, content decisions; only difference here is you’re instructing the AI to think about them.
   

7. Give Examples —> Yes, examples are good. Adult or child, human or artificial, attached or in a prompt, examples are good.
   

8. Use AI as Critic —> This is good advice. If you’re writing something, what you generate will always be better than what AI generates. It will be more relatable, more emotionally-impactful, more personalized and effective. But if you’re having second thoughts, AI can play the role of “peer reviewer” and give solid feedback when prompted properly.
   

9. Chat & Correct Mistakes —> When writing on your own, this is revision; when live in a conversation, this is following up and reaching an understanding. Another good reminder.

BONUS: He ends the prompt with “Signs of a Bad Prompt” and they are just characteristics of bad writing: vague, purpose-less, wordy, lacking support, full of holes…

Prompting is writing. It’s communication. If you apply what you know about good human-to-human communication to your prompting, you’ll do well.

The misconception I see most often is that “English” / writing skills aren’t necessary, but when we turn on our own extended thinking 🤣 it becomes clear that these skills are transferrable and valuable across contexts and industries. Sales, marketing, entrepreneurship obviously, but also in seemingly unrelated or technical fields like medicine, engineering, and AI.

No matter what: your ability to communicate clearly, specifically, persuasively, and efficiently will always matter.

This was a great find from Prof!

However, I’d like to add a trait I didn’t catch in the image.

I’ve talked about this before and I think it’s important to bring up again.

• Be patient when prompting.

When you read through all of these traits that were outlined above, it can seem like a lot. And it is a lot, especially at first. Even more so if you’re not a writer, you haven’t been using the tools for years or you’re still overwhelmed with where to begin.

I’ve been there before. But here’s the good news. If you can build the habit to be patient when prompting it will make all the difference.

For example: Let’s say you want to build an app and your interest involves cooking.

Impatient: "Give me app ideas for cooking because I love to cook" → 10 generic ideas (recipe organizer, meal planner, grocery list maker...) → "Those are boring, give me more" → 10 more → "Now add something with social features" → "Actually, make it about meal prep" → 45 minutes later you have 30+ ideas across 15 messages, you've forgotten what sparked this in the first place, and nothing feels like your idea.

Patient: Take 2 minutes before you prompt to think: Why am I building this? What frustrates me about existing cooking apps? Who would actually use this??

Then: "I want to brainstorm cooking apps specifically for parents who work late and need to get dinner on the table in under 30 minutes. Most meal planning apps assume you have time on weekends to prep, I want to explore solutions for weeknight chaos when you're starting from scratch at 6pm."

The difference: The first approach wasted 45 minutes and leaves you overwhelmed with tons of information and minimal direction. The second approach invests 2 minutes of thinking and gets you somewhere useful in 10 all because you took time to be patient with your prompting. Take a moment and ask yourself questions. If you don’t know what questions to ask, work with the bot to help you with gathering important questions before getting into your idea, project, etc.

I believe that people who get the most out of AI aren’t rushing it. They’re patient enough to think, adjust, and guide the conversation with intent.

Before You Go!

Thanks for reading. Next week, we’ll be back with a discussion about the importance of style and personality in the professional world. Human-focused, AI-supported.

In the meantime, if you have any experiences or ideas you believe our readers would benefit from, we’d love to hear from you at [email protected].

As always, see you on Tuesday.

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