Better AI Prompts, Better Leadership: The Overlap You Didn’t Expect

What if the same skills that make you a great manager could also make you a master of AI?

At first glance, managing people and crafting AI prompts might seem worlds apart. But dig a little deeper, and you'll find striking similarities. Both require clarity, empathy, and a collaborative mindset to get the best results. Treating AI like a trusted team member—providing clear expectations, context, and respect—can transform how you work with it, just as these traits elevate your leadership with people.

In this article, we’ll explore five key ways that great leadership skills translate into better AI prompts—and how mastering one can make you better at the other.

1. Communicate with Politeness and Respect

Which of these requests would you prefer?

• “I need you to send me that report by noon.”
• “Could you please send me the report by noon? I’d really appreciate it!”

The second approach, while still clear and to the point, adds a layer of politeness and respect that naturally encourages a better response. It turns out AI also responds better to polite requests!

A study from Waseda University found that across English, Chinese, and Japanese, “impolite prompts often result in poor performance.” While AI isn’t sentient, it mirrors human tendencies—and a little kindness goes a long way in generating quality results.

But there’s a balance to strike. Imagine this overly flowery and unclear request:

• “If you wouldn’t mind terribly, when you have a chance, could you perhaps send me the report by noon? No rush if that doesn’t work for you!”

Here, politeness is overdone, muddying the urgency and making the task unclear. Whether managing people or prompting AI, the key is to communicate with respect and precision. Being polite—without excessive flattery—sets the tone for constructive interactions.

As with your team, showing respect in how you communicate fosters better outcomes. This naturally leads us to the next critical skill: defining the task clearly.

2. Set Clear Expectations and Roles

Imagine assigning a task to someone on your team without giving them any context or direction. The result? Confusion, wasted time, and potentially disappointing work. The same holds true for AI.

In prompt engineering, clarity starts with defining three key elements:

• Who the AI is: Assigning a "persona" gives the model focus and direction. For example, “Act as a financial analyst,” “Write like a senior marketing executive,” or “Behave as a curious five-year-old asking questions.”
• Who the audience is: Specify the audience’s needs and knowledge level. Are you explaining to experts, senior executives, or the general public? For instance, “Summarize this concept for an executive presentation” will yield a different response than “Explain this for a beginner.”
• What the intended task is: Be precise about the deliverable. Is it an in-depth analysis, a succinct summary, or an engaging story? Combining clarity of purpose with audience definition produces far superior results.

This isn’t just an AI technique—it’s a best practice for managing people. Imagine asking a team member to “create a PowerPoint slide summarizing your project.” Compare that to this request:

“Please create a single PowerPoint slide summarizing the team’s recent project milestones. This slide will be presented to the board of directors, so it should be polished, concise, and visually impactful.”

In the second example, the team member understands the audience, the purpose, and how their work fits into the bigger picture. Similarly, when crafting an AI prompt, defining roles, audiences, and outcomes sets the stage for success.

Clear communication—whether with AI or people—empowers them to deliver exactly what’s needed. This leads to training them on what “good” looks like.

3. Show What Good Looks Like

When asking for results—whether from a team member or an AI—it’s not enough to simply explain the task. Providing examples of success is one of the most effective ways to set clear expectations and improve outcomes.

In the world of prompt engineering, this is known as few-shot prompting: supplying a handful of examples that illustrate the style, structure, or content you’re aiming for. For example, if you want AI to draft an executive summary, you might include two or three examples of well-written summaries within the same prompt. This approach reduces guesswork and helps the AI produce responses that are closer to what you need.

The same principle applies to managing people. Imagine asking a team member to draft an email for an important client. Instead of leaving them to figure it out on their own, you could share a successful example:

"Here’s a similar email we sent last quarter that got great feedback. Use this as a guide for tone, structure, and key points to include."

By providing a clear model of what “good” looks like, you empower both people and AI to deliver results that meet—or even exceed—your expectations.

But superior outcomes don’t just come from examples and clarity. Sometimes, the most effective way to motivate others—whether human or AI—is to communicate the urgency and emotional significance of the task.

4. Provide Purpose and Emotional Context

Both people and AI respond better when they understand not just what needs to be done but why it matters. This is the foundation of EmotionPrompting, a technique that demonstrates how sharing context and emotions with AI can enhance its performance.

A study exploring this concept found that adding emotional context—such as, “I’m feeling overwhelmed about this presentation”—often yields more thoughtful, tailored responses from AI. It turns out that even AI performs better when it understands the importance of a task.

Think of it this way: If you ask someone to “prepare a slide,” they might do the bare minimum. But if you explain, “This slide will be critical to convincing the board to fund our project—I need it to be concise, polished, and impactful,” they’re far more likely to deliver their best work.

Whether you’re managing people or prompting AI, providing context, urgency, and even a bit of emotion creates a stronger sense of purpose. When the importance of the task is clear, the results are better, the motivation is higher, and the output is far more impactful. This leads us to our final parallel: engaging as partners.

5. Engage AI and People as True Partners

The best managers know that success isn’t achieved by treating their team as subordinates who merely follow orders. Instead, they build relationships rooted in trust, respect, and collaboration. This same mindset can dramatically improve how you interact with AI.

When you view AI as a partner rather than a tool, you open the door to collaboration that maximizes value and performance. Instead of seeing it as a subordinate executing your commands, engage it in iteration and feedback. For example:

• Ask for an initial draft, then refine the output together.
• Request suggestions or creative ideas rather than dictating every detail.
• Share feedback by clarifying what worked and what needs improvement.

Just as you wouldn’t micromanage a capable team member, you don’t need to control every detail of an AI’s output. Trusting its capabilities and guiding it with thoughtful input allows you to co-create something stronger than you could achieve alone—a genuine 1+1=3 relationship.

This approach doesn’t just apply to AI. Engaging people as collaborators empowers them to bring their creativity, expertise, and energy to the table. A trusted relationship inspires individuals to go above and beyond, feeling valued and invested in the shared goal.

Whether with your team or AI, the mindset shift from “directive” to “collaborative” is transformative. By building this partnership, you foster innovation, create better outcomes, and unlock potential that might otherwise go untapped.

Your Best Leadership: Empowering Both People and AI

The same skills that make us better leaders—clarity, respect, collaboration, and empathy—also help us unlock the full potential of both AI and our teams. The future of work isn’t about choosing between humans and AI but about learning how to work together to achieve extraordinary results.

By treating AI as a trusted partner, communicating with precision, and sharing context and purpose, we create a framework for success that applies to both managing people and prompting AI. These skills aren’t just technical—they’re transformational.

What do you think? Have you noticed other parallels between leadership and AI? Share your thoughts in the comments—I’d love to hear your insights and continue the conversation.

Key Takeaways to Maximize Your Leadership & AI Prompting:?

• Communicate with politeness and respect.
• Set clear expectations with roles, audience, and purpose.
• Provide examples of success to guide outcomes.
• Share emotional context to inspire engagement.
• Collaborate as partners, not tools or subordinates.