Anthropic product lead Dianne Penn said on an episode of "Lenny's Podcast" released Sunday that she uses the company's flagship AI model, Claude, to help manage her team. Penn, who has served as Anthropic's head of product management for research and labs since 2023, said she has shared her approach with fellow managers at the company, using Claude to become a more effective coach because "it's hard sometimes to find the right perfect words, and the models have a lot of perfect and right words." She said she has encouraged team members to use AI to have "better conversations with each other" and "be better managers." Penn said she created a custom Claude "skill" inspired by the book "Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High" to prepare for workplace conversations, describing it as "almost like individualized personalized coaching." She noted that she does not rely on Claude to do her thinking for her, but uses it to refine ideas after forming her own point of view, arguing AI should function as a "thinking partner" that pushes back rather than simply agreeing.