Asked AI to join your team? Don’t skip AI onboarding

AI Onboarding

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So you asked AI to help draft an email. Or maybe it was a summary. Or a project outline.

But the stuff you got back was robotic, generic, and off-brand. Like it was written by someone who’s never worked a day in your business.

I get it. It’s disappointing – especially when everyone keeps saying AI will save you time and boost productivity. But the quality simply isn’t there. 

So you start wondering to yourself…
Is it the tool? Is it me? Is my business just too complex for this stuff to work?

However, most leaders miss a very important fact here.
AI isn’t the problem. The lack of business context and AI onboarding is.

If your AI doesn’t understand your business, it can’t support it.
Not properly. Not strategically. Not in a way that actually helps your team move forward and clients take notice.

And it’s not just your content that suffers. Your team then wastes time correcting, rewriting, and second-guessing its output – because no one took the time to teach the tool what it’s working with.

Through this article, I’ll help you change all that. Because if you want AI to deliver the goods, it needs a proper business briefing – just like any other team member.

Treat AI like the junior hire it is

Think about the last time you brought someone new into your team.

I bet you didn’t just throw them a task and hope for the best. You probably gave them business background, expectations, and resources… as well as a few corrections along the way.

AI needs to be treated the same way.

It’s not some magical mind-reader. (Although the output DOES seem magical at times…) It should actually be seen as a junior team member with an impressive memory and lightning-fast processing – but zero business context unless you provide it.

I see so many leaders jumping straight into the content requests without giving their AI tool even the most basic briefing. No company overview. No customer insights. No sense of tone or positioning. Then they wonder why the output sounds like it came from a template factory.

It’s not a matter of memorising prompts here either. It’s actually about clear communication.

If your AI tool doesn’t know what your business does, who it serves, and how you speak, how can it possibly create anything that reflects your strategy or brand?

So before you judge the tool, ask yourself – have I given it what it needs to actually do the job?

The simple AI onboarding process that changes everything

If you want high-quality output, you need to give high-quality input. It means briefing your AI assistant like you would any new starter on your team.

At a minimum, your AI needs to know:

  • What your business does
  • Who your ideal customers are
  • What you offer (services or products)
  • Your mission, vision, and values
  • How you communicate (aka your brand voice)

This information doesn’t have to be pretty. It just needs to be clear. 

Got a brand guide sitting in cloud storage somewhere? Upload it.
Have a messy About page that captures your business story? Copy and paste it in.
No formal doc at all? No worries. You can literally ask your AI:
“What do you need to know about my business to support me effectively?”

Most tools – like ChatGPT, CoPilot, or Gemini – will respond with a helpful list of questions to get you started. From there, you can piece together the answers at your own pace and feed them in.

Don’t overthink it. Don’t aim for perfection. Just imagine you’re explaining your business to a keen, new junior team member who actually wants to get things right.

This makes a huge difference. And it makes sense. Because suddenly your tool isn’t guessing. It’s working with context and understands your positioning. 

Put it to the test

Once you’ve briefed your AI, don’t just assume it got it – test it.

Just like with a new hire, you can’t just throw it into the deep end and hope for the best. You need to check for understanding first.

Try prompts like:

  • “Please summarise our core services and who they’re for.”
  • “Please write a one-page business plan with our mission, audience, and key goals.”
  • “Please draft a short intro email to a potential client.”

Then review what it gives you. Is it accurate? On-brand? Useful?

If not – don’t bin it. Treat it like training. Give feedback, correct what’s off, and ask it to try again. That’s how your AI improves. The more you guide it now, the more effective it becomes long-term.

Keep it updated as your business evolves

Your business isn’t static – so your AI onboarding shouldn’t be either. New services get added. Messaging gets refined. Teams grow. That means you can’t have your AI assistant working off the same info from six months ago if you want it to continue producing accurate output. 

The good news is, updating your AI is easy. Just prompt it with something like:

“We’ve made some changes to our services. Here’s the latest info. Please review and use this from now on.”
Or:
“Here’s our updated style guide. Please forget the old one and use this instead.”

It takes less than a minute – but that one prompt keeps your AI aligned and relevant. You wouldn’t let your team run on outdated briefs. Don’t let your tech do it either.

Final thoughts (and your next steps…)

If your AI-generated content feels generic, clunky, or just a little off – it’s not a lost cause.
You’re probably just missing one foundational piece: context.

Train your AI tool the way you’d train your team, and it will start delivering work that actually feels like it came from your business.

Need some extra support with getting your human team onboard and up-to-speed?
Book a free 15-minute chat with me here –  https://calendly.com/leanneshelton/15-minute-free-chat 

Let’s turn that “meh” output into something meaningful – and actually useful!

P.S. This article was written in collaboration between ChatGPT and my human brain – with inspiration drawn from Chapter 7: Briefing the Bot about your Business within my book ‘AI-Human Fusion’ – to be released June 2025.

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Leanne Shelton Speaking at a keynote