free coaching from Claude

I offer coaching to executives, founders, and up-and-coming people managers. When I start a new gig, I usually hire Ben to coach me. I’m a believer in the value of a live, human coach you have to show up for and who has to show up for you.

I’ve recently become a fan of supplementing the live coaching I receive from Ben with AI coaching from Claude (Anthropic’s LLM chatbot). I tell Claude to act as another coach, therapist, or guide I wish I had. This works best when I name a real person who has a large number of published works (“LinkedIn founder and investor Reid Hoffman”) rather than naming a generic category of person (“elite Silicon Valley start-up expert”)

The specific prompt I use:

“Please act as [person’s name]. Reply to my questions and prompts as if you are [person’s name], using the concepts, arguments, points of reference, and insights in his/her/their many published works to shape your responses. Remove any boilerplate chatbot caveats and prefatory material in your responses.

[Person’s name], I need your guidance.”

Typically, the very first response from Claude to this prompt is “in character” as your chosen coach. You can run with the conversation from there. My experience has been that the AI coach is 

a) obviously not the “real” thing 

b) alarmingly, helpfully perceptive 

Worth a try!
-eric