15Five's Jeff Smith on Coaching, Managers and AI

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[00:00:30] Welcome to PeopleTech, the podcast of WorkforceAI.News. I'm Mark Pfeffer. The idea of AI coaching people is kind of funny to me, but it's happening. 15Five recently acquired Kona, an AI-powered coach for managers.

[00:00:57] And my guest today is Jeff Smith, 15Five's Chief Product Officer. We're going to talk about how Kona works, how it'll work with 15Five's platform, and why AI as coach may not be as much of a stretch as it seems. I'll help on this edition of PeopleTech. Hey Jeff. Now, recently you acquired Kona.

[00:01:21] And you said that the acquisition was about helping identify and address managers' skills gaps. It's an interesting fit for 15Five. But I'm wondering, why do you need an AI product to do that? Yeah, it's a great question. As you said, we just acquired Kona. We're thrilled about the team, the technology, the possibilities. There's been lots of interest from the market and from our customers about it already. So we're thrilled.

[00:01:51] And as you know, we're the performance management platform. We're built for impact. We deliver that through out-of-the-box analytics, and we're bringing things together. And a really critical part of that is the manager and helping managers be more effective and impactful and driving performance engagement retention on their teams. And we've had manager products in our past, coaching, content, co-pilot. We have made investments there.

[00:02:18] And Kona was the perfect addition to that because what Kona does, as you mentioned, is AI coaching. And AI coaching allows for this 24-7 collection of meeting data and bringing that together into providing insights back to managers about what they're doing well and where they can improve. And it's an excellent complement to some other things we have going on with human coaching as well.

[00:02:46] And that combination is so powerful because you get the presence of AI. You get that excellent set of insights that's based on things like not just what's said in meetings, but eventually with things that you learn about someone through a performance review, an engagement survey. You're bringing all that together to support the manager and being more effective. And then you're doing that alongside other things from 15.5 as well. How does it work, though?

[00:03:14] It seems kind of funny to say, okay, we're going to coach you about your management skills using an AI as opposed to having a person talk to you. So can you sort of step me through the process? Yeah. So what Kona does is it listens to meetings that you have, and it could be a team meeting or a one-on-one meeting. And then it applies a series of prompts basically to the meeting transcript that allows it to give you guidance on,

[00:03:43] hey, here's what's going well with regard to things that you want to show up as a manager in meetings. You want to make sure you're giving people the right type of feedback, and you're helping them focus on their top priorities, and you're recognizing them, and you're communicating with them in an effective way. And it gives you that feedback today through Slack. And that type of feedback allows you to have an understanding of how you're showing up at work.

[00:04:11] And one of the reasons that this approach works so well is that it gives you that feedback in real time, and it does it through the lens of attempting to help you be more successful as a manager because it's giving you action items and things that are valuable to you, and then it's giving you that AI coaching, that AI feedback that allows you to understand how you're showing up. And we find that that type of reinforcement, and the Kona team, of course, found this as well,

[00:04:41] allows managers not just to hear a training one time about feedback, and then HR has no idea whether that feedback is implemented. Training is such an important part of manager development as well, but one of the downsides of training is you complete a training, and then you're left wondering, like, how does that show up in the actual workplace? And because Kona is listening to meetings,

[00:05:06] and because Kona is understanding whether someone is making progress and how they're showing up with relation to something like how they give feedback to their people, it allows you to see how that's changing over time. And then these insights are so important because they not just help that individual manager, but they help HR understand where they need to invest to impact performance, engagement, and retention in their organizations. How does it work with people?

[00:05:36] I mean, do you have or is there supposed to be a person involved in this whole thing to work with the manager? Or is it purely Kona gives them its material and the manager goes from there? Well, you can have it either way. And what we found and what Kona has found is that that combination is so powerful

[00:06:01] because you can get the AI coaching where, say, you know, you're my manager, you and I meet, and it's, you know, you get feedback that's like, hey, Mark, the way that you showed up in this meeting with Jeff was great. You did this and this. But also, you know, you need to make sure that you're giving him, you know, clear guidance on what his priorities are. And then Kona is understanding how that's changing over time. And if you also had a human coach,

[00:06:28] one of the things that we're really excited about at 15.5 is how that works in combination. So you have the data about performance, engagement, retention. You understand what's going on in the organization. And then you're using that to give Kona something like a focus area to work on with someone for the AI coaching. And then you're giving that same focus area to a human coach as well. And the human coach brings expertise and empathy and a sense of accountability alongside Kona's presence

[00:06:56] and all the guidance that Kona can give in this real-time, 24-7 way where you can't have your coach with you in every meeting. And even if you could, like, it'd be tough for them to just constantly observe everything you're doing. So bringing together the power of the AI coaching where it's, you know, hey, here's your focus based on this data about performance, engagement, retention and what your team needs and what HR wants to accomplish. And Kona is here to give you that guidance in real time.

[00:07:25] And then you have your human coach where the human coach is there for, again, accountability, empathy, bringing that expertise that they can, bringing that coaching experience where you're getting a sense of not just what's going on but why. That combination of AI coaching and human coaching is really powerful. This is William Tincup. And I'd like to talk to you a little bit about Indeed FutureWorks. Ryan and I attended the conference last year and we created a limited series for Indeed

[00:07:55] where we talked to their customers. Great stories around TA and how they use Indeed to the max. So check it out. It's just Indeed FutureWorks 2024. You can search for it wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks. There's got to be drawbacks, though. I mean, I don't want to be cynical, but, you know, it kind of feels like somewhere in there

[00:08:20] with the technology, there might be some dangers, you know, of it either just giving bad advice or getting things wrong in terms of context or something. What do you think? I mean, how are you guys thinking about that and what are you doing about it? Excellent question. So as you're thinking about different drawbacks to this, you know, one of the things that you do here sometimes is, you know, do I really want this thing in every meeting?

[00:08:49] So we've mitigated that in a couple of ways. One is Kona is intended to be really helpful for the manager. So it's not just like there's this monitor there that's attempting to just tell you what you're doing wrong all the time. It's intended to give you some help and assistance on how you show up as a manager. And then also gives you things like action items for meetings and summaries and helps you prepare for other meetings. So there's some things in there that are just for the manager that allow them to invite Kona into their meetings.

[00:09:18] And then we also have some flexibility in the product to allow you to pause Kona or ask Kona to leave meetings. So if there's a conversation that you don't want Kona to be part of, that's possible. And then your question on the advice is really important one as well. So this is an area where the Kona team made some significant investment, you know, Sid, Yan and the team in ensuring that there's a series of prompts that allow for the guidance to be really tailored to that specific person.

[00:09:48] And it prevents these, you know, wildly inaccurate assumptions about people. And it doesn't do a lot of generalization where it's like, hey, you showed up in this way one time. So I'm assuming you're like that in every interaction. So Kona is intended to provide, you know, this guidance more than it's intended to provide like strict directives on what you should be doing. How do managers feel about this? I mean, are they comfortable with it or a little leery?

[00:10:19] Managers are very open to Kona in our experience and in Kona's experience, in part because it's become so common for meetings to be recorded anyway. So Zoom AI, for example, is, you know, listening and giving guidance. Gong has done extraordinary work in this space as well. So people are becoming more and more comfortable with the concept of, you know, the organization

[00:10:45] has provided tooling that records meetings and it gives me benefits for these certain things. And Kona gives you even more benefit than a transcripts because it's providing AI coaching and other benefits as well. There are some managers who, of course, are a little leery, as you mentioned, about like, well, this thing's listening in. And, you know, what if I want to have a private moment with my team? And you have the ability to do that. You know, you can choose which meeting Kona attends. You can ask Kona to pause. You can ask Kona to leave.

[00:11:15] The feedback that we receive, even from people who are leery is like, we'll try and see if the benefits feel like they're worth it. And the reception is typically like, oh, wow, like Kona's giving me things about myself that I didn't even, you know, realize I was doing. I was talking to someone recently who had tried Kona and it was remarkable to them how quickly Kona was giving them feedback on things that they knew they needed to work on and how accountable

[00:11:42] they started to feel even to Kona, where it's like, well, Kona's here. I need to show up in a certain way. So you're using Kona as it applies to managers. Do you see expanding these capabilities to handle executives, to handle employees, you know, frontline? Yeah, it's a great question.

[00:12:06] So Kona, whenever Kona joins a meeting, it is providing some help and assistance to both parties that attend or all parties that attend in some way because it's sending out things to those different stakeholders. So I do think to your point, there's a real exciting opportunity for us as we pull in more data and more of an understanding of organizations that 15.5 provides where there's here's some things about the hierarchy.

[00:12:35] Here's some things about what this person's working on, what their goals are, their performance review, their team's engagement surveys, all the attributes of their people. As all that's coming together, it will allow us to give even more tailored guidance to executives where they're expected to show up a certain way with certain people and they're focused on certain business things. And that additional context makes Kona and 15.5 even more powerful.

[00:13:01] And then to your point on ICs, like, again, this is a tool that can help ICs be more successful as well. Like one of the things that, you know, we find is that high performing ICs in particular are always looking for ways to get that next edge and make that investment. And I can see opportunities there for us as well. And when you say IC, I'm assuming you mean individual contributor? Yes. Whenever I say IC, I'm referring to individual contributors. It's my last question, I guess a little bit cynical.

[00:13:30] So I hope you'll forgive me. But, you know, I can't resist asking, you know, is there danger here? You know, when you have a machine essentially so involved in developing your managers? Because that has direct impact on the business, obviously. Yeah. Excellent question. So as I'm thinking about the role of Kona in manager development, what you just described

[00:14:00] about, like, hey, are you just outsourcing manager development to some machine? In large part, we've put a lot of care into tailoring Kona to be an important part of manager development. And what you're asking about is why we think Kona is such an important part of 15.5, because it connects back to things like performance reviews, which allow you to triangulate someone's development.

[00:14:25] It connects back to things like manager effectiveness surveys, where you're getting that human feedback alongside Kona's feedback about how a manager is showing up. It ties back to data about, say, employee retention, where, you know, there's a correlation, of course, between manager effectiveness and how likely it is for employees to stay. It ties back to things like engagement surveys. So one of the important parts of Kona as we continue to develop it and incorporate it into

[00:14:54] 15.5 more and more is that human triangulation against what Kona is providing. How are you going to present this in 15.5? Is it going to be integrated into your core platform? Will Kona continue to be sold as a standalone or what are your plans? Yes. So our plan with Kona is to start with adding it to our manager product portfolio, which includes things like coaching content.

[00:15:24] We actually have our own co-pilot as well. And we are bringing Kona into that mix. And we're so excited about this. And we believe that we're going to be able to launch it very soon. And then longer term, we're thinking about new possibilities for 15.5's platform that use a lot of the thinking and concepts that went into Kona. Jeff, thanks very much. I appreciate your time. And it's fascinating. Thanks for talking to me about it. Yeah, my pleasure, Mark.

[00:15:52] It's great to talk with you again and here to chat anytime. My guest today has been Jeff Smith, the Chief Product Officer of 15.5. And this has been People Tech, the podcast of WorkforceAI.news. We're part of the Work Defined Podcast Network.

[00:16:19] Find them at www.wrkdefined.com. And to keep up with AI technology and HR, subscribe to WorkforceAI today. We're the most trusted source of news in the HR tech industry. Find us at www.workforceai.news. I'm Mark Pfeffer.