AI won’t replace you—but someone using AI might. By now it should come as no surprise that AI is expected to disrupt nearly every industry, shifting the skillsets required across global labor markets. Drawing on data from over 1,000 companies, the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 finds that the skills gap continues to be the most significant barrier to business transformation today, with nearly 40% of skills required on the job set to change and 63% of employers already citing it as the key barrier they face.
Top line: invest time in yourself to prepare for this change. You will need to practice and experiment with different AI tools and platforms in everyday scenarios. Have patience. Initially growth will be slow. However, by staying curious and using well-crafted prompts that provide detailed context, you can maximize gen AI’s effectiveness to help you navigate your career with confidence.
In this article, I hope to share why learning how to use gen AI daily is important, how you can use gen AI tools as your own personalized Return on Minute coach, and provide practical prompts and strategies to maximize your experience, learnings, and success.
The Skills of Tomorrow
Technology skills in AI, big data, and cybersecurity are expected to see rapid growth in demand. However, building a foundation isn’t just about coding or understanding algorithms. Human skills, such as creative thinking, resilience, agility and critical thinking, continue to be important. To succeed in this evolving employment landscape, a combination of both skill types will be increasingly crucial so individuals can navigate an AI-integrated world with confidence and purpose.
The AILit Framework, while being developed for students, provides a line-of-site to everyone interested in learning how to blend knowledge, skills and attitudes in order to engage with AI responsibly and effectively. It is organized around four practical domains:
- Engaging with AI – Understanding when and how AI is present in everyday tools and critically evaluating its outputs.
- Creating with AI – Collaborating with AI tools to support problem-solving and creativity, while considering ethical implications like ownership and bias.
- Managing AI’s actions – Delegating tasks to AI responsibly, setting guidelines and ensuring human oversight.
- Designing AI solutions – Exploring how AI works and how to build or adapt systems to solve real-world problems.
So Now What?
There are many professional development frameworks from the 70-20-10 rule – which states that leaders learn and grow from 70% on-the-job experiences and assignments, 20% developmental relationships and 10% coursework and training – to David Kolb’s Experiential Learning Theory – a widely recognized model that explains how adults learn through experience, reflection, conceptualization, and experimentation.
What most of these frameworks have in common is that professional development is rooted in experience and experimentation. And that’s good news.
Time to Try
The potential uses of gen AI are only limited by our imaginations. With that said, here’s what my research suggests are some of the most common “jobs to be done” that leaders across industries and organizations need help with.
“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.” – Albert Einstein
These can help you learn how to craft effective prompts for:
- Prioritizing
- Managing competing demands
- Communication
- Business Performance & Metrics
- Team management
Each one includes a clear goal, context, source, and expectations, so you can see what makes them strong. Don’t forget to adapt for your own use.
Prioritization
Prompt 1: Balancing Leadership Priorities
“Act as a Chief of Staff. I need a prioritized action plan for handling overlapping requests from the CMO and CTO. The CMO is focused on the marketing deliverables, while the CTO is pushing for roadmap updates. Use any recent meeting notes or submission templates as reference. Present the plan in a table with priority, owner, and rationale.”
Why it works:
- Goal: Prioritize tasks from two senior leaders.
- Context: Competing demands from marketing and security.
- Source: Meeting notes and submission templates.
- Expectations: Output in a table format with clear rationale.
Prompt 2: Prioritization Dashboard
“Based on recent team meeting notes and flagged deadlines, create a weekly prioritization dashboard that helps me balance requests from [Leader 1] and [Leader 2]. Include urgency, impact, and stakeholder visibility.”
Why it works:
- Goal: Weekly prioritization dashboard.
- Context: Requests from two key collaborators.
- Source: Team meeting notes and flagged deadlines.
- Expectations: Dashboard format with urgency and impact indicators.
Prompt 3: Reprioritization Strategy Brief
“Act as a strategic advisor. Given a recent shift in leadership direction, create a brief that helps me reprioritize my team’s current deliverables. Include a summary of the new priorities, potential risks to in-progress projects, and a recommended action plan.”
Why it works:
- Goal: Reprioritize based on new direction.
- Context: Leadership or strategic shift.
- Source: Internal updates or leadership communications.
- Expectations: Summary + risks + action plan.
Project Management
Prompt 1: Conflicting Timelines
“Review the latest fiscal year ROB overview and identify any conflicting deadlines or resource overlaps with the [team] projects. Recommend a resolution strategy that aligns with leadership expectations.”
Why it works:
- Goal: Identify and resolve conflicts.
- Context: Fiscal year ROB vs. project timelines.
- Source: Fiscal year ROB overview document.
- Expectations: Conflict identification + resolution strategy.
Prompt 2: Scenario Planning Tool
“Create a scenario planning worksheet to help evaluate the impact of shifting from one strategic focus to another. Include columns for initiative, current status, risk level, mitigation plan, and revised timeline.”
Why it works:
- Goal: Evaluate impact of a strategic shift.
- Context: Change in business or operational focus.
- Source: Project or initiative tracking data.
- Expectations: Structured worksheet for planning.
Prompt 3: Risk Mitigation Plan
“Generate a risk mitigation plan for in-progress projects that may be impacted by a recent shift in organizational priorities. Include risk categories, likelihood, impact, and contingency actions.”
Why it works:
- Goal: Mitigate risks.
- Context: Organizational or strategic change.
- Source: Project plans or risk logs.
- Expectations: Risk matrix + contingency actions.
Communication
Prompt 1: Communication Plan
“Act as a Director of Communications. Draft a communication plan to inform stakeholders about a shift in strategic priorities. Include talking points for leadership, FAQs for team members, and a timeline for rollout.”
Why it works:
- Goal: Communicate change clearly.
- Context: Strategic or operational pivot.
- Source: Internal strategy updates.
- Expectations: Talking points + FAQs + timeline.
Prompt 2: Communicating Trade-offs
“Summarize the top 3 priorities from recent [team 1] and [team 2] meetings. Then, suggest how I can communicate trade-offs to both teams diplomatically. Use a professional tone suitable for executive stakeholders.”
Why it works:
- Goal: Understand and communicate competing team priorities.
- Context: Team meetings.
- Source: Meeting summaries or notes.
- Expectations: Summary + communication guidance in executive tone.
Prompt 3: Communicating Project Delay
“Draft an email to [Leader] explaining why a deliverable for the [team name/leader name] must be delayed due to a high-priority request from the [team name/leader name]. Be transparent, tactful, and suggest a revised timeline.”
Why it works:
- Goal: Communicate a delay.
- Context: Conflict between priorities.
- Source: Leadership requests and project timelines.
- Expectations: Tactful email with revised timeline.
Business Performance & Metrics
Prompt 1: Initiative Performance Dashboard
“Create a dashboard to track the performance of my current initiatives. Include KPIs such as engagement, adoption, customer satisfaction, and ROI. Use available data from project trackers or planning templates. Highlight trends and flag any underperforming areas.”
Why it works:
- Goal: Monitor initiative performance.
- Context: Ongoing initiatives.
- Source: Project trackers, planning templates.
- Expectations: Visual dashboard with trends and alerts.
Prompt 2: Success Criteria Evaluation
“Evaluate whether my initiatives are meeting their defined success criteria. Use metrics such as adoption rate, customer impact, and alignment with business objectives. Present findings in a table with status (on track, at risk, off track) and recommendations.”
Why it works:
- Goal: Assess alignment with success metrics.
- Context: Initiative health check.
- Source: Initiative plans, business objectives.
- Expectations: Table format with status and recommendations.
Prompt 3: Project Retrospective Summary
“Create a retrospective summary for a completed initiative. Include what worked well, what didn’t, key metrics achieved, and lessons learned. Format it as a slide deck or executive summary.”
Why it works:
- Goal: Reflect and learn from completed work.
- Context: Post-initiative review.
- Source: Final reports, team feedback.
- Expectations: Slide deck or summary format.
Team Management
These prompt examples can help you manage the balance between providing strategic guidance and staying hands off so you can empower your team while still offering clarity, direction, and support.
Prompt 1: Strategic Alignment without Overreach
“Draft a communication I can use to align my team on strategic goals without prescribing how they should execute. The tone should be empowering, clear, and supportive of innovation.”
Why it works:
- Goal: Communicate vision without micromanaging.
- Context: Strategic alignment.
- Source: Leadership communication principles.
- Expectations: Empowering message with clarity of purpose.
Prompt 2: Team Empowerment Check-In
“Generate a set of reflective questions I can use in 1:1s to assess whether I’m empowering my team effectively without micromanaging. Include prompts that help uncover blockers, confidence gaps, and opportunities for growth.”
Why it works:
- Goal: Evaluate leadership style and team autonomy.
- Context: 1:1 conversations.
- Source: Coaching best practices.
- Expectations: Actionable questions for reflection and feedback.
Prompt 3: Governance without Micromanagement
“Based on project governance best practices, outline a light-touch governance model I can use to stay informed on progress without slowing down the team. Include cadence, checkpoints, and escalation paths.”
Why it works:
- Goal: Maintain visibility without control.
- Context: Project oversight.
- Source: Prioritization framework
- Expectations: Governance model with minimal friction.
Pro Tips
When using gen AI, especially for particularly tricky situations, ask gen AI to generate different versions of a response. Ask for different tones, from assertive, to conversational, to diplomatic, or for different types of formats (lists, tables, narrative) so you can choose the best approach. If you are not getting the output that you’re hoping for, don’t forget you can also use gen AI as a prompt coach.
Prompt Coach Prompts
Prompt 1: “Analyze my prompt and provide feedback on how I could improve it/make it more actionable/change the format.”
Prompt 2: “I am not getting the output I expect from my prompt. Help me fix it.”
Prompt 3: “Show me 3 good prompt examples to help me with [topic].”
Final Thoughts
Fundamentally, treat these prompts as simply a guide. Outputs should not be taken as definitive or proven solutions to your problems, but rather as suggestions or tips to equip you with a broader range of alternatives and options.
Don’t forget, experimenting is the name of the game. Just stay curious. Keep practicing. Progress is slow, initially. That’s part of the learning curve. Eventually you’ll get better and will pay off by significantly improving gen AI’s utility and impact for you.
This is an investment in you and that’s worth more than anything.
Return On Minute 
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