Kona

Kona is an AI-powered leadership coach that helps managers with tricky conversations, performance reviews and other touchy situations. It's designed to work within Slack, but can be used elsewhere, offering personalized coaching and advice to improve management skills and team performance.

Kona is designed to tackle some of the problems People Teams face, like managers who are bad at talking to people, team performance and giving people feedback on time. It's integrated with existing documentation, training and other tools to offer advice that's in line with a company's culture. Managers can ask Kona questions about real-world situations and get advice on how to give feedback, set expectations and handle other tricky situations.

Among Kona's features:

• Performance Support: Helps managers prepare data, draft answers and conduct performance reviews in half the time.
• Learning Integration: Offers the latest L&D resources and courses to help managers meet their learning objectives.
• Project Management: Considers recent tasks, projects and calendar events to give better feedback and help with prioritization.
• Knowledge Management: Draws from company documentation to ensure coaching is in line with established processes.
• HRIS Integration: Pulls from team structures to give more relevant advice.

Kona costs $49 per user per month for on-demand access to expert leadership advice and the ability to upload custom documents. A 14-day free trial and Slack Sandbox are available for testing. Kona is designed for Slack, but it has an open waitlist for a Microsoft Teams integration.

Kona is geared for remote managers, but anyone can use it. Managers have reported a confidence boost in handling difficult conversations and performance reviews. Conversations take place in private Slack DMs, and anonymized usage data is available to admin users.

Kona can be used by managers and by individual contributors who want to prepare for leadership roles. Its flexibility and practicality make it a good fit for teams that want to improve their leadership.

Published on June 9, 2024