Master Your Meetings with AI-Powered Coaching
Discover how AI can help you prepare for, analyze, and improve your meetings and calls.
I'm excited to announce a new direction for my newsletters. From now on, you'll receive actionable emails on how to use AI to improve your work and life.
In each newsletter, I'll share one practical AI use case that has been invaluable in my work.
Here's a sneak peek of the topics you can expect:
How to use AI as a personal coach for your calls and meetings (this edition)
Her is here: Turn AI into your intelligent voice-driven companion today
Five whys? Ten whys? No problem — have an answer for all your kids’ why questions with AI
Train for your next race or sporting competition with AI
A quick housekeeping note: I'm merging the Saent newsletter list with We Eat Robots (WER) and will continue these emails under the WER banner. You can expect the same practical productivity tips and thoughts you used to receive, now with an AI twist. 🤖
Get your own pro coach with AI 🧢
Imagine having a personal coach who can provide expert-level feedback on your performance in any meeting or call. With AI tools like Claude or ChatGPT1, that's now possible. Here's how to start using AI as your pro coach today.
1. Record and transcribe your meetings
The first step to receiving coaching on your calls and meetings is obvious but crucial: you need to record them. Tools like Zoom, Grain, and Otter.ai have transcription built-in. Just remember, always get consent from all participants before hitting that record button. 😇
You can use a tool like MacWhisper on Mac to transcribe voice memos and other recordings. (I haven't found a similar tool for Windows; let me know in the comments if you know of one! 🙏)
2. Let your AI tool coach you
To get started, attach your meeting transcript to a chat with your AI tool and try this simple prompt:
Please act as my personal coach and review my performance in this meeting. Provide an overview of my strengths, areas for improvement, and specific suggestions for addressing any issues.This works for any meeting: one-on-ones, team syncs, sales calls, board meetings, you name it. A coworker tried this out earlier this week and said, ”okay wow… i did it for a call with [CUSTOMER]. it knocked it out of the park…”
You can even do this across multiple meetings.
For example, here's an excerpt of what my AI coach told me after I shared transcripts from some recent sales discovery calls at Animalz (the content marketing agency where I work) and asked it to compare my performance to our CEO Ty's based on his calls.
Transcript: Sales Discovery call between John Doe and Tim Metz
Tim's approach:
Tim asks good questions to understand John’s content needs, goals, and current challenges.
He digs into the desired content types, such as blog posts and newsletter writing, to get a clearer picture of the scope.
Tim also inquires about the timeline for making a decision and the budget, which are important factors in creating a proposal.
Areas for improvement:
Tim could have explored the target audience and buyer personas more deeply to tailor the content strategy accordingly.
He could have asked more about Morgan's content distribution channels and overall marketing strategy to see how the content fits into the bigger picture.
Learnings from Ty's approach:
Ty often discusses the client's business goals and how content can support them. Tim could incorporate this more explicitly in his discovery calls.
Ty tends to provide more context about Animalz's unique approach and value proposition. Tim could highlight Animalz's strengths and differentiators more clearly.*
💡 Always feel free to ask follow-up questions to go deeper on specific points or push the AI if it overlooked a critical part of the conversation.
3. Get a brief for your next meeting
Once you’ve discussed the ins and outs of your meeting with the AI, ask it to prepare a brief for your next meeting:
Based on what we’ve just discussed and my previous performance in this type of meeting, can you create a specific, one-page brief that will help me prepare for and perform better in my next meeting of this type?Of course, you can expand this prompt with more specific information about your next meeting to get a more tailored prep brief. For example, depending on the meeting type, you could ask for an agenda, interview questions, or negotiation strategy.
💡 Want to explore AI for personal productivity further? Book a free 15-minute session with me, and I'll personally guide you through getting started with AI models like ChatGPT or Claude. We can also tackle a specific task on your to-do list together. Grab a slot on my calendar here.
More coaching approaches for your meetings
I've compiled a list of advanced meeting coaching prompts on this Notion page. Check it for more ways to use AI for meeting preparation and analysis.
Stay tuned! In the coming weeks, I'll share more AI-powered productivity use cases that will help you improve your life and work. I'd also love to hear about your experiences using AI for personal productivity. Reply to this email with your own tips, challenges, or questions — I read every message.
👋 Till next time,
Tim
While you can use ChatGPT for the meeting coaching techniques I shared, I recommend trying the new Claude 3 model by Anthropic. It's more intelligent than GPT-4 across several dimensions:
Better nuance and context understanding.
Longer, more in-depth recall of files and conversations.
Higher-quality, more reliable outputs.
Most importantly, you’ll actually notice the difference.
ChatGPT's outputs often feel 40%-75% of what you want versus Claude's, which gets it 80%+ right. That's the difference between having an unreliable coworker whose work you always need to review versus one you can trust, requiring only spot checks and minor adjustments.
The catch? You'll need to shell out ~$20 per month for a paid Claude subscription (and the model isn't available in the EU). But trust me, it's worth it. Try it for one month, and set a calendar reminder so you remember to cancel if you're unsatisfied.
⚠️ One more thing: AI hallucinations are still a problem. Don't rely on Claude to provide factual information and research. Perplexity AI is a better choice for such tasks.