Kona by 15Five is your AI-powered partner, designed to help you grow as a people leader directly in your flow of work. By seamlessly integrating into your 1-on-1 meetings and surfacing relevant coaching insights, Kona helps you build stronger teams and drive better outcomes without adding extra work to your day.
In this article, you'll learn what to expect from Kona as a manager:
- What Is Kona?
- How it works
- How Kona Supports You in 1-on-1s
- How Kona Supports continuous growth
- FAQs
Access and availability
⛔️ Required access to Kona.
👥 This article is relevant to Managers.
📦 Kona is available as an add-on for companies on our Perform or Total Platform pricing packages.
What Is Kona?
Kona is an AI assistant embedded within 15Five that helps managers and their direct reports have more focused, impactful 1-on-1 conversations.
It does this by:
- Joining your 1-on-1 meetings (optional, with consent)
- Transcribing conversations
- Providing a smart summary of action items, key themes, and follow-ups
- Prompting suggested questions and conversation starters in future 1-on-1s
- Helping HR measure and improve manager effectiveness over time
Kona is built into 15Five’s Manager Effectiveness system and seamlessly integrates with the 1-on-1 experience you’re already using.
How it Works
Now that Kona is set up, just keep running your 1-on-1s as usual—Kona will do the heavy lifting in the background to support your growth and save you time. Here's how it works:
Kona joins recurring 1-on-1 meetings between you and your direct reports. It listens quietly in the background, capturing the full conversation without disrupting the flow. Its role is to support your growth by observing patterns and surfacing insights you can use to lead more effectively.
User commands allow you or your direct report to pause note taking, resume note taking, or remove Kona from the meeting.
During your 1-on-1, Kona captures clean, structured notes and action items in the background—so you can stay focused and fully present in the conversation.
Shortly after the meeting, both you and your direct report will receive a summary via Slack and email that includes:
- 📝 Shared Notes: A structured overview of what was discussed.
- 📌 Suggested Action Items: Automatically generated next steps based on the conversation. You can choose whether you want to add action items to your 1-on-1 agenda, edit them, or delete them.
Tip
You can access shared notes and action items directly from your Slack/Email notification, or by opening the 1-on-1 agenda in 15Five (Manager Tools > 1-on-1s).
In addition to shared notes and suggested action items, Kona will also send you private, personalized coaching tips tailored to what happened in the meeting and backed by your company’s best practices and priorities.
Coaching tips are:
- Contextual: Based on the behaviors observed in your recent meetings
- Actionable: Practical guidance you can apply right away
- Evolving : As Kona learns from your interactions and results, its tips adapt to keep pace with your growth
How Kona Supports You Between 1-on-1s
🌅 Morning Briefs
If you have 1-on-1s scheduled for the day, you’ll receive a short morning message in Slack with:
- A preview of your meeting agenda
- A coaching tip tailored to the day’s conversation
- Reminders about open action items from previous meetings
It’s a simple way to prepare for your meetings with focus and clarity.
1-on-1 Help
These insights help you track growth over time and stay aligned with your development goals.
How Kona Supports Continuous Growth
📆 Monday Recaps
Every Monday, Kona sends you a weekly digest so you can start the week with clarity. These recaps highlight:
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Patterns observed across your 1-on-1s – surfacing themes in what your team is saying.
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Progress on your focus area – reminders of where you’re growing as a manager.
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Suggestions for improving your leadership behaviors – small, actionable nudges to keep you on track.
Delivered via Slack DM (with email backup), these insights are timely and easy to act on.
📊 Monthly Report
At the end of each month, you’ll receive a snapshot of your management growth:
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Behavior trends – which strengths are showing up consistently, and which gaps are still emerging.
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Micro-goals – personalized recommendations to practice in upcoming 1-on-1s.
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Digest of the past month’s 1-on-1s – so you don’t lose sight of the bigger picture.
These arrive in a digest format via Slack DM and email, making it simple to reflect and reset before a new month begins.
What’s Next?
As you continue running your 1-on-1s in 15Five, Kona will work quietly in the background to capture insights, provide coaching, and support your growth as a manager. You don’t need to change your workflow—just keep meeting with your team, and Kona will surface the guidance and reminders you need to lead effectively.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) ❓
During onboarding, you connect Kona to your calendar (Google or Outlook/Teams). You then select which recurring 1-on-1s to invite Kona to. Kona never auto-joins meetings — it only joins the 1-on-1s you’ve explicitly chosen. You can find more on how to onboard and set this up in our Manager Onboarding to Kona article.
You can choose how and when to receive Kona-related notifications—such as pre-1-on-1 tips and post-meeting summaries—from your notifications settings. To learn how, check out this article:
👉 Manage my notifications
How long does Kona keep transcripts?
Transcripts are kept for 30 days only, for coaching quality assurance. After that, they are permanently deleted.
Who can access my transcripts?
Only Kona uses transcripts for coaching purposes. They are never accessible to HR, admins, or other managers.
Does Kona record my meetings?
No. Kona does not record audio or video. It only processes meeting transcripts to provide notes and coaching prompts.
Will my team see the coaching prompts I receive?
No. Coaching prompts are delivered only to you as the manager. If you want your team to see them, you’ll need to share them directly.
Can my company change how long transcripts are stored?
Yes. Custom retention policies can be arranged through your Customer Success Manager, subject to a security and compliance review.
Does compliance or audit have access to raw transcripts?
No. Kona’s privacy principle is to protect managers and their teams. Raw transcripts are never shared for compliance or audit access.