#HRTechChat: Jeff Smith of 15Five on Building Better Managers in the Age of AI

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In this episode of #HRTechChat, Nicole Roberts sits down with Jeff Smith, COO of 15Five, to unpack what it really takes to build better managers in an era of AI, constant change, and overflowing HR to-do lists. A psychologist by training with deep R&D and product experience, Jeff brings a rare lens on how organizations can redesign systems, expectations, and technology to truly support people leaders—not just measure them.

They dig into the mounting pressure on HR and managers, the shift from “HR owns all people issues” to shared accountability, and why management has to be treated as a daily practice, not a one-time promotion. Jeff explains how tools like 15Five and Kona AI can turn everyday one-on-ones into continuous performance data, simplify review cycles, and give leaders real-time coaching—while still honoring privacy, governance, and the realities of legal and IT risk. Along the way, they explore common failure modes: promoting star ICs into roles they aren’t equipped for, burying managers in 20-question reviews, and ignoring the signals that your best people no longer want to step into leadership.

If you still think “being a good manager” is something people just figure out on their own, this conversation will change your mind.

Our #HRTechChat Series is also available as a podcast on the following platforms:

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Transcript:

00:00:00 Nicole Roberts

Hi everyone, and welcome back to HRTechChat from 3Sixty Insights.

00:00:05 Nicole Roberts

I’m your host, Nicole Roberts.

00:00:06 Nicole Roberts

Today I’m joined by someone I’ve really enjoyed talking with in prep for this episode, Jeff Smith from 15Five

00:00:13 Nicole Roberts

Jeff brings a fascinating mix of product, R&D, and people leadership experience, and he’s at the center of some big conversations happening right now around performance, AI, and manager capability.

00:00:28 Nicole Roberts

Jeff, thanks so much for being here.

00:00:30 Jeff Smith

Thank you so much, Nicole, for having me.

00:00:31 Jeff Smith

I’m looking forward to this conversation.

00:00:33 Nicole Roberts

Likewise.

00:00:34 Nicole Roberts

So for those who don’t know you, can you briefly share your background and how you’re

00:00:40 Nicole Roberts

R&D experience shapes how you think about the future of people leadership and manager enablement.

00:00:45 Jeff Smith

Yeah, thank you.

00:00:46 Jeff Smith

I guess one of the most important things whenever I just think about my background is I’m actually a psychologist.

00:00:51 Jeff Smith

So I’m a human factor psychologist, which is really understanding human capabilities and limitations and how you design systems and technology to have a fit between those things.

00:01:02 Jeff Smith

So that heavily informs, you know, some fundamental beliefs that I have about work and people and in today’s environment, people

00:01:10 Jeff Smith

are still the most important part of your business, and they’re the most complicated part.

00:01:14 Jeff Smith

And that’s one reason that I’m so passionate about HR tech in general, as well as performance management in particular, because it really speaks to that intersection between technology, people, and what a business wants to accomplish.

00:01:29 Jeff Smith

And then when I think about my own background, you know, as you mentioned, it’s a little varied.

00:01:34 Jeff Smith

I’ve worked at a company as large as 400,000 people.

00:01:38 Jeff Smith

and as small as five people.

00:01:40 Jeff Smith

I’ve worked in a variety of industries, and I’ve spent most of my career, though, in R&D, as you mentioned, which means that I love thinking about systems and prioritization and product launches and how all these things fit together to create better customer experiences at scale.

00:01:56 Jeff Smith

So that mentality certainly influences just how I think about my current role here as COO at Fifteen Five.

00:02:04 Nicole Roberts

Yeah, that blend of technical and the organizational insight is so rare and it’s so important, especially as we’re thinking about AI systems interacting with humans, which really brings me to what HR leaders are dealing with now.

00:02:21 Nicole Roberts

And you and I, you know, talked about the pressures that HR teams are under and that managers are under, huge workloads, small teams, constant change.

00:02:31 Nicole Roberts

What are the biggest pressure points that you’re seeing right now, especially around capacity constraints and change fatigue?

00:02:38 Jeff Smith

Yeah.

00:02:39 Jeff Smith

I mean, you said it, over the time that I’ve spent at 15.5 and even my stint in what we call people services, AKA HR myself, the pressure continues to escalate for HR and for managers, where more and more things just get added to lists that HR is expected to understand.

00:03:01 Jeff Smith

It’s not just payroll benefits, employee relations, engagement, performance, leader dev, manager dev, career path, competencies.

00:03:09 Jeff Smith

How are we doing AI transformation?

00:03:11 Jeff Smith

And then the same thing’s happening to managers as well.

00:03:15 Jeff Smith

Managers are expected to be player coaches in many cases.

00:03:18 Jeff Smith

Many of them, unfortunately, do not receive a lot of tools or technology or investment in them improving as managers.

00:03:25 Jeff Smith

Management’s a skill.

00:03:26 Jeff Smith

It’s not.

00:03:28 Jeff Smith

It’s not just something that like, oh, I sat in a one hour training and then you do it perfectly every day.

00:03:34 Jeff Smith

I mean, I personally wrote a book about people management and I still find myself coming back to the fundamentals on an everyday basis in terms of my own behavior.

00:03:44 Jeff Smith

But whenever I think about the pressure,

00:03:46 Jeff Smith

There’s now this pressure where, hey, we need growth.

00:03:50 Jeff Smith

Look at these AI rocket ship type of companies that are delivering these extraordinary outcomes.

00:03:56 Jeff Smith

They’re becoming 8, 9, even 10-figure businesses with very small teams very quickly.

00:04:03 Jeff Smith

And then there’s this perception where it’s like, anytime you think about hiring someone or backfilling someone, it’s like, can’t we just replace that person with AI?

00:04:11 Jeff Smith

Like, couldn’t AI just do their job?

00:04:14 Jeff Smith

And then, by the way, couldn’t AI just do all of our jobs?

00:04:17 Jeff Smith

And then, and by the way, these models are really powerful.

00:04:21 Jeff Smith

I think there isn’t a hype cycle around AI that’s happened already, but then with every release of the model, things become more and more powerful.

00:04:29 Jeff Smith

And this is a technological force that can’t be denied in terms of its scale and impact.

00:04:36 Jeff Smith

This is not something that we’re going to look back on in 20 years and be like, Hey, nothing happened with that AI thing.

00:04:42 Jeff Smith

We’re going to look back and it’ll be similar to electricity or computing where we’ll look back

00:04:47 Jeff Smith

back and say like, wow, everything changed in that moment.

00:04:51 Jeff Smith

So HR is feeling the business pressure.

00:04:54 Jeff Smith

They feel the pressure from their employees.

00:04:56 Jeff Smith

They feel the pressure from this, you know, AI megatrend that’s undeniable.

00:05:01 Jeff Smith

And then they’re still at the intersection of what is the most important and complicated part of the business, which is dealing with people.

00:05:09 Jeff Smith

And leaders are oftentimes the most complicated, you know, people in a business, myself included, but HR is at the center of all that.

00:05:18 Jeff Smith

And then they’re at the center of all that on top of, COVID changes, economy changes, 6 generations in the workforce, the changing role of work in people’s lives, for a period of time.

00:05:31 Jeff Smith

work was the center of many people’s lives.

00:05:33 Jeff Smith

Now it’s not the center of people’s lives.

00:05:35 Jeff Smith

And people expect that personalized support and care from HR and from managers, and that’s why they need to work together there as well.

00:05:44 Jeff Smith

And I do believe AI can help with that.

00:05:46 Jeff Smith

And 15.5 helps with that as well.

00:05:49 Nicole Roberts

Yeah.

00:05:50 Nicole Roberts

Yeah, I agree with you.

00:05:50 Nicole Roberts

I mean, HR is so broad, right?

00:05:53 Nicole Roberts

And getting broader.

00:05:54 Nicole Roberts

I mean, where else would you see

00:05:57 Nicole Roberts

a job posting, a job description that is like this long.

00:06:01 Nicole Roberts

And that is the expectation of one person doing that.

00:06:04 Nicole Roberts

It’s, it is so wild to me.

00:06:05 Nicole Roberts

And you just, you literally don’t see it in many other roles.

00:06:09 Nicole Roberts

You don’t see this many things that they go, oh, well that’s, that’s an HR thing.

00:06:14 Nicole Roberts

That’s a people piece of the business.

00:06:16 Nicole Roberts

And the HR handles that.

00:06:18 Nicole Roberts

It’s like, whether it’s, even if you have your

00:06:21 Nicole Roberts

your, your payroll under finance and like that doesn’t mean that people aren’t still going to go to HR first and foremost, because you’re kind of untraining those habits.

00:06:32 Nicole Roberts

And it’s just that muscle memory for people that, hey, if anything has to do with my employee journey, I’m going to somebody in HR because HR historically, very rightfully so should be the area of the business where people are going because they need help and they need support.

00:06:48 Nicole Roberts

And so

00:06:50 Nicole Roberts

add on to that now, it used to be kind of a niche or a nice to have if somebody in your HR team was technically proficient.

00:06:59 Nicole Roberts

Well, now it’s like, well, what do you mean you’re not an AI expert?

00:07:03 Nicole Roberts

And, and you know, you’re on the HR team.

00:07:05 Nicole Roberts

Shouldn’t you know how to do all of these different things?

00:07:07 Nicole Roberts

Like it’s becoming table stakes to have some of this technical competency because

00:07:15 Nicole Roberts

we’re adding another layer into the business and a whole nother mode of doing work into the business.

00:07:21 Nicole Roberts

And because it is some way tangential to the people, then HR becomes the one that needs to all of a sudden be understanding this and regulating it and moderating it.

00:07:33 Nicole Roberts

And it’s wild to me that the shift that we’re really seeing that either HR is a

00:07:42 Nicole Roberts

eliminated and replaced with lower compensated people with less experience who are kind of armed with AI, but don’t have that experience to validate whether or not that’s actually something that makes sense for the business, that the direction forward as proposed by the AI

00:08:03 Nicole Roberts

would be the best thing to do.

00:08:05 Nicole Roberts

But then also, if they’re not indexing on that side, then it’s, well, now this is something that AI needs, that HR needs to just take on, and they need to oversee that piece of it.

00:08:18 Nicole Roberts

So one thing that you said that I loved is that one of 155’s goal is to make performance management effortless.

00:08:28 Nicole Roberts

And I love thinking about that effortless, right?

00:08:31 Nicole Roberts

Like that should be,

00:08:33 Nicole Roberts

We should all, when it comes to a performance perspective and when it comes to a leadership perspective, this should be embedded in our muscle memory.

00:08:43 Nicole Roberts

It should be a cycle of continuous improvement, right?

00:08:46 Nicole Roberts

Like, just like you were saying, you’ve written a book on it and you still are every day trying to be a better manager than you were yesterday, right?

00:08:55 Nicole Roberts

Like, that’s my philosophy, I know it’s yours.

00:08:58 Nicole Roberts

So what does it look like in practice for HR teams who are already stretched thin?

00:09:05 Jeff Smith

Yeah, it’s a great question.

00:09:07 Jeff Smith

And I think, you know, as you mentioned already, HR teams are expected to do more.

00:09:13 Jeff Smith

And I feel with the complexity of that more, and that’s why the partnership between HR and managers is so important.

00:09:20 Jeff Smith

And then,

00:09:22 Jeff Smith

to a point you made as well, clarifying what people should expect from HR and what HR can offer, and then what is leadership and what is people management in your organization is so important as well.

00:09:36 Jeff Smith

Sometimes leaders and managers sort of outsource people-related issues to HR whenever

00:09:42 Jeff Smith

Caring for your people and making sure that you meet their needs for security and growth and performance, and you’re balancing what they need from the business and what the business needs from them, that’s not just HR’s job.

00:09:54 Jeff Smith

That’s also leadership and management.

00:09:57 Jeff Smith

So to your point on at 15.5, focusing on making performance management effortless, of course, that’s a marketing term in a way because it will always require some effort, but it is effort that we want to reduce for HR in part because we want some of that effort to be picked up by leaders and managers.

00:10:17 Jeff Smith

So if you start with the end in mind of performance management is ensuring that an organization understands who is making a positive impact on the business, you know, in alignment with their role and compensation and the expectations that come with it.

00:10:33 Jeff Smith

Really, the performance review exists for a reason where it’s a summative moment of feedback where there’s downstream decisions that are getting made, maybe about someone’s promotability or a merit increase or comp adjustment and other things.

00:10:48 Jeff Smith

And so the performance review is such an important ceremony for HR and a very high stakes one because you need to make the right choices on high performing people and high potential people, and you need to identify opportunities for improvement.

00:11:03 Jeff Smith

throughout the business as well.

00:11:04 Jeff Smith

And then alongside that, though, it’s so important that you’re empowering your people to just have regular conversations with continuous feedback loops about what’s going well.

00:11:16 Jeff Smith

So let’s not forget to talk about, you know, wins and progress and, Hey, thank you so much, you know, so-and-so for doing this.

00:11:24 Jeff Smith

It had this important impact on this customer or this stakeholder of yours or our company.

00:11:29 Jeff Smith

And that recognition part is so important.

00:11:31 Jeff Smith

And then also feedback is about encouragement too.

00:11:34 Jeff Smith

Let’s not forget about just bolstering people, especially, you know, in tough times where it’s like, Hey, you’ve got this, I’ve got your back.

00:11:41 Jeff Smith

But then you also need to normalize talking about what needs improvement.

00:11:45 Jeff Smith

And these conversations need to happen in a regular, you know, ongoing way.

00:11:50 Jeff Smith

Right.

00:11:51 Jeff Smith

You know, and at 15.5, you know, this isn’t something that we just train people on, it’s something that’s in our software as well.

00:11:59 Jeff Smith

And then with a tool like Kona Coach or Kona Meeting Assistant, it becomes just a natural part of a manager’s workflow because managers have this powerful tool called one-on-ones where they interact with their people.

00:12:12 Jeff Smith

And then something like Kona Coach or Kona Meeting Assistant provides feedback on what was described in those types of meetings to the IC

00:12:21 Jeff Smith

and to the manager, and then also collects that data such that you can have a snapshot of someone’s performance when you go to write that review.

00:12:28 Jeff Smith

So you’re not just from scratch, like looking through handwritten notebooks and emails and all over the place.

00:12:35 Jeff Smith

You’re instead tapping into hours and hours of conversations that you’ve had with this person, not only about how they are and the status updates,

00:12:45 Jeff Smith

but also what’s going well for them, the wins in progress, and what needs improvement.

00:12:49 Jeff Smith

And you’re looking at that entire catalog of feedback whenever you attempt to put together a performance review that effectively describes where they’ve been successful and where they need to grow.

00:13:02 Jeff Smith

The more that that happens naturally in the flow of how managers work, the more likely it is that people will adopt those behaviors and habits that we want them to adopt.

00:13:12 Jeff Smith

You know, the idea that, you know, you send someone like a one pager on how to be a manager in your organization, you just tell them to, you know, go be a good manager.

00:13:22 Jeff Smith

Like it doesn’t have to be that way anymore.

00:13:25 Jeff Smith

Like having that clear set of expectations and agreements for people managers is so important.

00:13:30 Jeff Smith

But in order for performance management to be truly become effortless or HR or reduce that level of effort, the manager needs to play that critical role.

00:13:40 Jeff Smith

And then the other part of, you know, making performance management, you know, more effortless for HR to me is keeping it as simple as possible to achieve the goals that you want to for your performance management program.

00:13:53 Jeff Smith

So what I notice whenever I interact with our customers and customer interactions for me are one of my very favorite parts of working at Fifteen Five, you know, in my current role because I

00:14:04 Jeff Smith

I have such a deep respect for what people in HR do.

00:14:07 Jeff Smith

It’s really hard.

00:14:09 Jeff Smith

When you think of empathy and them and their world, it’s like, wow, their world is complicated.

00:14:15 Jeff Smith

Their world gets sideswiped with people-related things basically every day.

00:14:20 Nicole Roberts

Yes.

00:14:20 Jeff Smith

But when I think about making it more effortless for them, it’s really energizing for me.

00:14:25 Jeff Smith

But what I notice is that performance management programs naturally get more complicated.

00:14:33 Jeff Smith

And you have to really intentionally try to simplify them.

00:14:36 Jeff Smith

Where a question I’ll ask very commonly is like, what information do you need to make a decision on whether someone should be promoted?

00:14:46 Jeff Smith

And it’s like, how do you make sure you get that information in the review?

00:14:49 Jeff Smith

And then it’s like, what information do you need so that managers can give the right feedback to employees so they can grow?

00:14:57 Jeff Smith

And then how you include that information in your review.

00:14:59 Jeff Smith

And then it’s like, okay, you have these six other questions, what are they for?

00:15:04 Jeff Smith

And if it becomes tough to describe what the question is for, then don’t ask it.

00:15:09 Jeff Smith

Just simplify the review process.

00:15:12 Jeff Smith

There’s no rule out there that says it must be 20 questions long or something like that.

00:15:17 Jeff Smith

Oftentimes it’s like, we added a question here, when so-and-so was CEO, they really cared about this, so we added these three questions, and then we had a new HR leader who added these.

00:15:27 Jeff Smith

Let’s just go back to the basics of here are the downstream things that happen based on this review.

00:15:32 Jeff Smith

Here’s the decision the business makes in partnership with HR.

00:15:36 Jeff Smith

Here are the conversations managers need to have with their people about their performance, about compensation, about their growth, their career path.

00:15:43 Jeff Smith

And let’s make sure that data shows up there.

00:15:45 Jeff Smith

And then for us, it’s how do we make that as effortless as possible?

00:15:49 Jeff Smith

with things like Kona Coach and Kona Meeting Assistant feeding into this in an ongoing way.

00:15:54 Jeff Smith

Yeah.

00:15:54 Jeff Smith

So it’s not just review hell for 12 weeks of like debating and organizing and doing confirmation bias on people.

00:16:01 Jeff Smith

And instead it’s based on just this continuous stream of information that just naturally occurs and flows into 15.5 as you meet with your people.

00:16:11 Nicole Roberts

I love that.

00:16:12 Nicole Roberts

And I love that it is…

00:16:14 Nicole Roberts

know, getting real time feedback.

00:16:16 Nicole Roberts

I mean, I know that you and I were talking about if you have even even a newer manager, right, that maybe they’re not completely bought into what are the behaviors that you’re looking from me and what are the competencies to being a leader.

00:16:31 Nicole Roberts

And if they get that real time feedback of you showed up with your people,

00:16:37 Nicole Roberts

You demonstrated the behavior that we were looking for that we know is is kind of key to being a successful leader.

00:16:45 Nicole Roberts

And look at the real time feedback that you’re getting that, you know, you’re seeing more engagement with your team, that you’re seeing that you’re able to get results through your people.

00:16:55 Nicole Roberts

And I love that.

00:16:57 Nicole Roberts

There has to be also an experience of feeling like people can be more engaged in real time in their meeting ’cause they’re not so focused on making sure that they’re taking their notes the whole time or that they’re focused on all of those pieces because they know that they have their, you know, little sidekick that is part of the meeting and is supporting them in that way.

00:17:20 Nicole Roberts

I wanna go back to what you were talking about with management being a practice and not a skill, I don’t wanna,

00:17:27 Nicole Roberts

I don’t think that that is, I don’t want to gloss over that as being too simple and kind of a throwaway topic.

00:17:33 Nicole Roberts

I think it is absolutely very much so a practice and not a skill, but I think that it can be a skill that is obviously built and developed.

00:17:42 Nicole Roberts

What are you seeing that organizations are still missing about building great managers?

00:17:48 Jeff Smith

Yeah, it’s a great question.

00:17:50 Jeff Smith

And again, being a people manager is complicated because people are complicated and, you know, again, similar to HR, you’re

00:17:57 Jeff Smith

dealing with that tension between, here’s what this person wants and needs from the organization, and here’s what the organization wants and needs from this person.

00:18:07 Jeff Smith

And then people have, things happen in their life and you’re supporting them in new ways and the days of,

00:18:14 Jeff Smith

You know, you supervise 12 people and your job is to make sure that, you know, they follow a safety standard and clock in every day.

00:18:21 Jeff Smith

Like that’s not the job anymore, you know, for almost every manager.

00:18:25 Jeff Smith

So what organizations are missing though, you know, to your point, Nicole, is that rhythm of ensuring that managers are practicing what they are told to practice.

00:18:36 Jeff Smith

You know, whenever I say that, you know,

00:18:38 Jeff Smith

people management does include skills.

00:18:41 Jeff Smith

You know, it’s like you need skills like empathy, goal setting, like, but also it’s a practice in that you do it every day.

00:18:49 Jeff Smith

It’s like, you know, fitness, mental health, like these are things that you need to commit to every day.

00:18:56 Jeff Smith

And not every day is gonna be perfect.

00:18:58 Jeff Smith

I know that not every interaction that I have with people is perfect as an example.

00:19:02 Jeff Smith

However, like you need to be committed and that as an HR leader and even as an executive, like you need an ongoing understanding of how your managers are showing up in your organization.

00:19:14 Jeff Smith

The reality is that even in a small organization, you’re investing millions in your people managers.

00:19:20 Jeff Smith

And then as it gets larger, it’s tens of millions, you know, hundreds of millions in people managers.

00:19:25 Jeff Smith

Yeah.

00:19:26 Jeff Smith

And without having a sense of how well they’re showing up every day, it could be a missed opportunity to create tremendous value in the business.

00:19:35 Jeff Smith

If you don’t understand like, Hey, is this manager, you know, setting goals and priorities?

00:19:40 Jeff Smith

Is this manager providing, you know, recognition, encouragement, other types of feedback and alignment with what we expect?

00:19:47 Jeff Smith

Like, is this manager one that really looks out for the fact that a high performing person, they need a career path?

00:19:55 Jeff Smith

Like all of our high performers need career paths.

00:19:57 Jeff Smith

Like that’s a conversation that needs to happen.

00:19:59 Jeff Smith

Career paths are a tricky one because oftentimes managers are so in the day-to-day to week-to-week, it’s tough to make space for that.

00:20:06 Jeff Smith

Like for my own people, I have to schedule like separate conversations that’s called like so-and-so’s name, career path.

00:20:12 Jeff Smith

Because we’re doing so much on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis that career path isn’t coming into those conversations.

00:20:19 Jeff Smith

But if, I think one of the most fundamental things

00:20:23 Jeff Smith

that HR can do is just write down in one page, you know, here are the things we expect from our managers.

00:20:30 Jeff Smith

Like, what are they?

00:20:32 Jeff Smith

And just make those expectations explicit.

00:20:35 Jeff Smith

And then you need managers to agree to them.

00:20:37 Jeff Smith

And, you know, going back to one of your points, you know, if a leader or manager says like, well, I don’t want to have the tough conversations with my people about where they need to improve.

00:20:48 Jeff Smith

I mean, the sad truth is they can’t be a leader or a manager.

00:20:51 Jeff Smith

That’s a part of the job.

00:20:53 Jeff Smith

I mean, managers, this is borrowing from High Output Management by Andy Grove, one of the greatest books on management ever written.

00:21:02 Jeff Smith

I consider it to be the best one.

00:21:04 Jeff Smith

But if you think of a manager as the output of their team, then you need to be able to increase that output.

00:21:12 Jeff Smith

And you increase the output by creating systems, giving feedback, but increasing motivation and

00:21:18 Jeff Smith

increasing skill level on your team.

00:21:21 Jeff Smith

And in order to increase skill level, oftentimes if you’re a manager, you’re an expert in what that person does or some version of it, and you need to be able to coach them up and have those conversations.

00:21:31 Jeff Smith

But to your point, if you don’t have the clear set of expectations at the foundation and you don’t have a way to measure whether a manager or understand whether a manager is operating with those expectations in mind on a day-to-day basis, you’re stuck.

00:21:46 Jeff Smith

Because the manager is like, Well, I didn’t know that I was supposed to do that.

00:21:49 Jeff Smith

Or, You sent me this list of 200 things that I need to do as a manager.

00:21:54 Jeff Smith

How can I possibly do those?

00:21:56 Jeff Smith

And when I talk to some of our customers about this, the ones who believe in their managers and think that their managers are generally doing well, although there’s opportunities for improvement in us all, including myself, they have that foundational set of expectations.

00:22:14 Jeff Smith

Like, it’s written down.

00:22:17 Jeff Smith

Like, here’s the seven behaviors we expect.

00:22:19 Nicole Roberts

Right.

00:22:19 Jeff Smith

And then by the way, you give that to your ICs as well, because here’s what you can expect from your manager.

00:22:26 Nicole Roberts

Yes.

00:22:26 Jeff Smith

And then to your point, like, and here’s when you go to HR.

00:22:29 Jeff Smith

And it’s just like, the clearer these things become, the easier it is for people to meet and exceed that standard.

00:22:36 Jeff Smith

But also the accountability conversations become, you know, so much simpler to say,

00:22:43 Jeff Smith

Like, hey, as a manager here, you’re expected to do these seven things.

00:22:47 Jeff Smith

We’re noticing you’re only doing these four and you’re not doing these three.

00:22:51 Nicole Roberts

Right.

00:22:51 Jeff Smith

And instead of like, hey, you’re a bad manager because this one time, anecdotally, I heard that you might not have given feedback in a way that was, you know, honest and caring.

00:23:02 Jeff Smith

It’s just like, we need to get out of that and into like, this is how you set up.

00:23:07 Jeff Smith

up your day, your week, your month, your quarter as a manager here.

00:23:11 Jeff Smith

And here’s what you’re expected to do.

00:23:13 Jeff Smith

And here’s how we do those things here.

00:23:15 Jeff Smith

And we’re going to give you software and tooling like 15.5 and Kona Meeting Assistant, Kona Coach.

00:23:21 Jeff Smith

We’re going to give you the set of things that allows you to build those habits and rhythms and practices.

00:23:27 Jeff Smith

As a manager, we’re going to have your back.

00:23:29 Jeff Smith

Instead of like, well, we hope you do this well.

00:23:32 Jeff Smith

You only really hear from us when you don’t do it well.

00:23:35 Jeff Smith

But, you know, enjoy, you know, your 12% pay bump that you got from being a manager.

00:23:40 Jeff Smith

Hope, hope it goes well, you know, and that, that’s a situation too many people are in.

00:23:45 Nicole Roberts

Yes, absolutely.

00:23:46 Nicole Roberts

Well, and, and also, I mean, there’s one thing about when you’re in a management role and especially if you’re newer to it, I mean, you’re used to being part of a team and being that individual contributor and being measured on your individual results and now.

00:24:02 Nicole Roberts

When you’re in a leadership role, you should be measured on exactly what you said, right?

00:24:07 Nicole Roberts

Like the performance that you’re getting through others.

00:24:10 Nicole Roberts

You’re no longer that individual contributor, and it’s not your sole success that you should be getting measured on.

00:24:18 Nicole Roberts

I think that organizations really miss the mark when they take a very high performing individual contributor and throw them into a management role because they think they’re going to somehow inspire those around them.

00:24:31 Nicole Roberts

Nine times out of 10, they’re going to compete with those around them still.

00:24:34 Nicole Roberts

But also they don’t have the skills to be a manager, right?

00:24:38 Nicole Roberts

Like that is a completely different skill set.

00:24:41 Nicole Roberts

And.

00:24:42 Nicole Roberts

I love that Kona can provide that real-time feedback, but also from a training perspective, I can only imagine the possibilities of if you’re also doing proactive training with your leadership and you’re starting to see these trends that might be emerging through the insights that you gather of this really needs to be the focus of the next time that we get our leaders together and do some training because

00:25:11 Nicole Roberts

we’re all experiencing, or at least a large majority of our managers are kind of experiencing this same gap or this same hurdle.

00:25:19 Nicole Roberts

Like what a tremendous opportunity to be able to address what your gaps are in as real time as possible, right?

00:25:28 Nicole Roberts

Instead of waiting until you have that semi-annual survey or you start to see a run on attrition,

00:25:37 Nicole Roberts

Or maybe it’s not attrition because of the state of the market.

00:25:41 Nicole Roberts

Maybe you’ve got presenteeism going on where people are staying, but they’re not happy.

00:25:46 Nicole Roberts

They’re not doing their best work.

00:25:47 Nicole Roberts

They’re not really moving the business and driving the business.

00:25:52 Nicole Roberts

And also your manager who used to be that high performer that was super engaged, that loved what they did and they were killing it.

00:26:03 Nicole Roberts

Now they’re in a role where they were basically set up for failure and they’re failing, and nobody likes that feeling.

00:26:09 Nicole Roberts

So you’ve just taken a superstar, a super high, high potential, probably strategic person in your organization, and you’ve put ’em in a role, set ’em up for failure.

00:26:21 Nicole Roberts

They’re, they’re properly equipped, they’re not properly supported.

00:26:25 Nicole Roberts

And then also it creates that domino effect because when people are

00:26:30 Nicole Roberts

When you find that you don’t have a line of people looking for promotion from within, you need to look at your senior leaders and say, what is it about the way that they’re showing up in the organization that no one wants to be like them?

00:26:46 Nicole Roberts

Do you see the person that is answering emails and being on calls 24/7 and they say, bye.

00:26:53 Nicole Roberts

I kind of like having, you know, some personal life in my life, and maybe I don’t want to be somebody who is working themselves to exhaustion, because if that’s what management looks like at this company, I want no part of it, right?

00:27:07 Nicole Roberts

Or if they see somebody gets promoted and they see they’re really not thriving and

00:27:14 Nicole Roberts

super engaged in their work and they can kind of see them fall off a cliff.

00:27:18 Nicole Roberts

Nobody wants to move into that and be the next person that’s that’s up and doing that in the organization.

00:27:25 Nicole Roberts

So I love the way that you all are using AI and using technology to really try to reinforce real behavior change and examine, you know, tones and patterns and behaviors.

00:27:41 Nicole Roberts

And I mean, it’s one thing to have a

00:27:45 Nicole Roberts

a meeting summarizer that is giving you kind of a transcript and maybe tells you how many times you paused or you spoke over somebody or something like that, right?

00:27:54 Nicole Roberts

Like a lot of the note takers do that, but to really evaluate what are the organization’s values?

00:28:01 Nicole Roberts

Are our people stepping up and demonstrating our values?

00:28:05 Nicole Roberts

What have we identified good looks like in a manager?

00:28:08 Nicole Roberts

Because a lot of organizations aren’t even clear on that.

00:28:12 Nicole Roberts

And are our managers, are our leaders showing up and demonstrating those things?

00:28:17 Nicole Roberts

And then are we seeing those positive effects?

00:28:20 Nicole Roberts

And then can we use this as a persona of this is what good looks like based on this manager is, is demonstrating these behaviors, their team is crushing it.

00:28:33 Nicole Roberts

And so this is really just a reinforcement, right?

00:28:36 Nicole Roberts

Of maybe we’re doing some AB testing on what we think are demonstrated behaviors and our competencies should

00:28:42 Nicole Roberts

should be, this manager over here is knocking it outta the park and we can actually look at the data of what their conversations look like and how they show up.

00:28:53 Nicole Roberts

Like what a, what a time to be alive in leadership, right?

00:28:56 Jeff Smith

Yeah.

00:28:57 Jeff Smith

Yeah.

00:28:58 Jeff Smith

You, you covered probably 15 topics in there that could each be their own individual podcast.

00:29:03 Nicole Roberts

It probably could.

00:29:05 Jeff Smith

But yeah, on the, on the last one there, uh,

00:29:07 Jeff Smith

of, you know, what a time, like when you think of, I mean, how many billions of dollars have been spent on training where it’s like, well, we hope they do that.

00:29:19 Jeff Smith

We have no clue if they will or not.

00:29:21 Jeff Smith

I guess we’ll maybe hear about it in the next engagement survey, you know, versus now you have the opportunity to say, you know, to a manager, here’s what we expect.

00:29:31 Jeff Smith

It’s these seven things, you know, here’s our values, you know, we’re inserting, you know,

00:29:37 Jeff Smith

this AI agent into your meetings.

00:29:40 Jeff Smith

That agent specializes in identifying, you know, the presence and absence of certain manager behaviors.

00:29:47 Jeff Smith

This is part of our philosophy to make you the best manager that we can make you.

00:29:51 Jeff Smith

And, you know, we’re going to know on a week by week basis, like you’re going to get coaching in real time on how you can improve.

00:29:58 Jeff Smith

And the reality is, is like the people that you should have as managers and leaders, and this applies to high performing ICs as well.

00:30:06 Jeff Smith

They want the feedback so they can get better.

00:30:09 Jeff Smith

If you’re scared of the feedback, then you do not want to improve.

00:30:12 Jeff Smith

And that’s a red flag.

00:30:15 Jeff Smith

And by the way, just as a quick aside,

00:30:19 Jeff Smith

Definitely create dual track career ladders such that for people to get promoted, they don’t have to become managers.

00:30:25 Jeff Smith

Like ICs make a big impact on your business too.

00:30:29 Jeff Smith

There’s a big difference between someone who knows how to get the best out of yourself and how to get the best out of other people.

00:30:35 Jeff Smith

And that distinction is critical.

00:30:38 Jeff Smith

And also.

00:30:39 Jeff Smith

If you make it so it’s like, well, the only way to go up from here is to become a manager and that person has an achievement mindset or wants to make more money, then they’ll become a manager whether they want to or not.

00:30:52 Jeff Smith

That’s not a good thing for your business.

00:30:54 Jeff Smith

And then once someone’s a manager, like you can put them back in an IC role, but that can be tough to do.

00:30:58 Jeff Smith

So yeah, I mean,

00:31:00 Jeff Smith

We’re in this place now where set the expectations, make them, you know, explicit, get people to agree to them, ensure that they have, you know, what they need in terms of knowledge and skill around that.

00:31:10 Jeff Smith

It doesn’t have to be, you know, that complicated.

00:31:13 Jeff Smith

It’s really like seven things cover most of the situations.

00:31:17 Jeff Smith

Here’s how HR supports you.

00:31:19 Jeff Smith

ICs, here’s what you can expect from managers.

00:31:22 Jeff Smith

Here’s AI to help.

00:31:23 Jeff Smith

You know, you have this.

00:31:25 Jeff Smith

this tool that’s going to follow you around as a manager and support you and make things easier for you, not only now, but also during performance review time.

00:31:33 Jeff Smith

You know, you’ll see what there’s a presence and absence of these behaviors.

00:31:37 Jeff Smith

You know, one that came up for me that personally that was interesting was about…

00:31:42 Jeff Smith

the amount of conflict management that was happening in my one-on-ones.

00:31:46 Jeff Smith

And, you know, as a COO, a lot of what I do is talk about cross-functional alignment.

00:31:52 Jeff Smith

And, you know, it’s not like we sit around and just talk for 20 minutes about when things are going perfectly, you know?

00:31:59 Jeff Smith

So a lot of my conversations, even in a company that’s, you know, very collegial, coherent, we’re working together.

00:32:06 Jeff Smith

is like, well, we’re working on this project and like, it’s my top priority, but it doesn’t seem like it’s a priority for them and those types of things.

00:32:12 Jeff Smith

And me seeing that report, again, even someone who thinks about people management literally every day, not just my own management, but how to help the world have better managers, that was a great reminder for me.

00:32:26 Jeff Smith

Where it’s like, wow, I spent a lot of time, you know, resolving like cross-functional, you know, tension and making sure people are aligned.

00:32:34 Jeff Smith

Like that was a great thing for me.

00:32:36 Nicole Roberts

Yeah.

00:32:37 Jeff Smith

And I’m really proud to work, you know, somewhere that’s trying to help managers deal with these complexities.

00:32:43 Jeff Smith

You know, the complexity of the organizational demands and their people’s demands and the performance demands and the complexity of their own role.

00:32:50 Jeff Smith

Like to your point, some managers are player coaches, but the reality is, is that managers can’t just super I see their way into being successful as a manager.

00:33:00 Jeff Smith

It’s a different set of skills, like you need to create the conditions for your people to be successful.

00:33:05 Jeff Smith

You need to ensure that they have the right goals and priorities.

00:33:07 Jeff Smith

You have to give them the feedback and coaching.

00:33:10 Jeff Smith

You have to give them the near-term feedback with a long-term mindset around their career.

00:33:14 Jeff Smith

You have to handle compensation.

00:33:16 Jeff Smith

There’s so many things that go into people management that they need all the help they can get.

00:33:20 Nicole Roberts

Yeah.

00:33:21 Nicole Roberts

We have to talk about privacy, right?

00:33:24 Nicole Roberts

Leaders always ask about this.

00:33:26 Nicole Roberts

How does 155 ensure that the data stays secure and context specific when AI is listening in on meetings?

00:33:38 Jeff Smith

Yeah, I feel with these privacy concerns for sure.

00:33:41 Jeff Smith

And whenever we talk to, you know, customers and prospects, like this is a conversation that comes up all the time where

00:33:49 Jeff Smith

You know, IT is showing up on more of these calls, legal showing up on more of these calls.

00:33:54 Jeff Smith

I’m sure.

00:33:54 Jeff Smith

You know, people are concerned about note takers in general.

00:33:58 Jeff Smith

Like there’s note takers that can be recording people and you have no idea you’re being recorded.

00:34:04 Jeff Smith

And like, that’s a big concern.

00:34:06 Jeff Smith

But that’s also one of the benefits of, you know, our approach at 15.5 with Kona is the fact that it’s obvious it’s recording, it’s in the meeting with you, it lets you know.

00:34:18 Jeff Smith

You have the ability to pause it or remove it if you like, you know, and it’s, it’s very clear, like, Hey, this is being recorded.

00:34:26 Jeff Smith

And then we actually, you know, a thing that we do currently at 15.5 is we only use the transcript to create other things.

00:34:34 Jeff Smith

We don’t actually even keep a trend the transcript over time.

00:34:38 Jeff Smith

And for that reason.

00:34:40 Jeff Smith

And, and then also because 15.5, you know, we have a focus on, you know, security as well.

00:34:47 Jeff Smith

and building trust with our customers, it’s like, you know, this data is landing in 15.5.

00:34:52 Jeff Smith

Like that’s where it’s going.

00:34:54 Jeff Smith

It’s not, you know, in a system that, you know, each individual person in your company has selected a different note taker.

00:35:01 Jeff Smith

And I’m sure you’ve joined calls.

00:35:03 Jeff Smith

before where there’s somehow more note takers than they are humans in the call.

00:35:08 Jeff Smith

And it’s like, how can that be?

00:35:10 Jeff Smith

Who brought more than one note taker?

00:35:12 Jeff Smith

Are note takers bringing their own note taker?

00:35:14 Jeff Smith

How does that work?

00:35:16 Nicole Roberts

Yeah.

00:35:17 Jeff Smith

But I feel with the complexity of this because the reality is, is that managers discuss sensitive topics in organizations and you need to make sure that that data is secure and where’s it going?

00:35:29 Jeff Smith

And then also,

00:35:31 Jeff Smith

There’s legal considerations here.

00:35:32 Jeff Smith

You should definitely involve your counsel as an HR leader and making decisions on what to add to your tool stack.

00:35:40 Jeff Smith

And similar to the bring your own device era where it’s like everyone had a Blackberry because it was so secure, but then people loved other types of phones.

00:35:52 Jeff Smith

So it was like, Well, I’m using this anyway, and I’m a C-level person, IT person, so you’re not going to make me use a Blackberry.

00:35:59 Jeff Smith

We’re in

00:36:00 Jeff Smith

that era of this where, you know, there’s a land grab motion for the note taker space, and then there’s specialist tools that are specifically designed for certain things like making managers better, like Rona at 15.5 that are doing different things with that data, that are specializing in certain ways to use the data that give you the opt outs that you want, that, you know, we don’t use this data to train models unless, you know,

00:36:29 Jeff Smith

People are aware of that.

00:36:30 Jeff Smith

We’re never training models that are outside of 15.5 with it.

00:36:33 Jeff Smith

We’re doing all those things, but this is a hot topic for a reason because this data is sensitive and people are scared.

00:36:40 Jeff Smith

People are worried like, Hey, are you using whatever tool to record us right now?

00:36:45 Jeff Smith

Because you don’t know.

00:36:46 Jeff Smith

But with Kona, you’d know, it’s clear.

00:36:49 Jeff Smith

It’s only showing up to certain types of meetings right now.

00:36:52 Jeff Smith

You know it’s there, you see the cute dog logo.

00:36:56 Jeff Smith

You have the chance to remove it, but this is a hot topic for a reason with our customers.

00:37:01 Nicole Roberts

And think about it, if you’re not providing a tool, but there are so many tools out there, and if somebody wants to, in an effort of continuous improvement, like go it alone, they are most likely using some type of note taker.

00:37:17 Nicole Roberts

Or now you can record on your phone and it’ll give you a transcript.

00:37:22 Nicole Roberts

Then they’re uploading that into ChatGPT or some kind of

00:37:26 Nicole Roberts

of open AI, right?

00:37:28 Nicole Roberts

And so now, where is that information going and what is happening with that?

00:37:33 Nicole Roberts

Like, I think people are incredibly naive if they think that, oh, well, we are not as an organization using any type of AI and our employees are not.

00:37:45 Nicole Roberts

Yes, they are.

00:37:47 Nicole Roberts

1,000%, yes, they are.

00:37:48 Nicole Roberts

‘Cause think of all the aspects of how AI is used in, I mean, it, it, it’s,

00:37:56 Nicole Roberts

It’s everywhere, right?

00:37:57 Nicole Roberts

We’ve got ChatGPT and we’ve got Copilot, and it cracks me up the number of people that think that because Copilot is licensed through an organization, through their Microsoft account, that somehow that makes it a closed AI.

00:38:11 Nicole Roberts

When Copilot is out there,

00:38:13 Nicole Roberts

releasing studies on the insights that they’re gathering from, like that blows my mind that people are so naive that they’re just blindly putting, just uploading whole spreadsheets and data sets in there.

00:38:26 Nicole Roberts

And I mean, it gives me heartburn.

00:38:28 Jeff Smith

It’s giving a lot of your listeners heartburn as well.

00:38:31 Nicole Roberts

It should.

00:38:32 Nicole Roberts

It should.

00:38:33 Jeff Smith

The idea, the idea that, you know, someone just say like downloads

00:38:39 Jeff Smith

your, all your account data from say, Salesforce.

00:38:42 Nicole Roberts

Yeah.

00:38:43 Jeff Smith

And then just tosses it into a tool and says like, Hey, analyze this for market opportunities that a human wouldn’t see.

00:38:50 Nicole Roberts

Oh my gosh.

00:38:51 Jeff Smith

And it’s just like on their personal license of some, you know, system.

00:38:56 Jeff Smith

And it’s like, where’s that data going?

00:38:58 Jeff Smith

Is that data discoverable, you know, in legal situations?

00:39:03 Jeff Smith

Like, I mean, these.

00:39:04 Jeff Smith

You know, and that, and we, we have all that in mind around the security, the trust, the privacy, you know, the optionality for a reason.

00:39:12 Jeff Smith

But to your point, Nicole, like the thought that people aren’t like, we’re going to not have note takers at our company is

00:39:21 Jeff Smith

There’s an inevitability to this that it’s impossible to deny.

00:39:26 Jeff Smith

It’s, it is, that’s what, why the bring your own device era came to my mind where it’s just like, we don’t use, you know, iOS devices here.

00:39:35 Jeff Smith

It’s like you do now, you know, like, like, yeah, you do.

00:39:39 Jeff Smith

People are using, people are using them.

00:39:41 Jeff Smith

People are opting to not have e-mail, but to do other things on their phone.

00:39:45 Jeff Smith

If you’re just saying they can’t have e-mail on an iPhone, like, like, and that’s where this was, I don’t

00:39:52 Jeff Smith

know, 20, 25 years ago now, or whatever amount of time, 20 years ago, and here’s where we are today.

00:39:57 Jeff Smith

And that’s one of the reasons why, while there are, you know, serious privacy things with anything that takes notes or join meetings, like ensuring that it fits into your HR tech stack, ensuring that you have legal involved, you have IT involved, allows you to make choices that, you know, you embrace these technologies.

00:40:16 Jeff Smith

Because organizations that don’t embrace the technologies, one, are just the

00:40:21 Jeff Smith

They’re denying the inevitable non-licensed use, but also they’re missing tremendous opportunities for productivity improvements in their people.

00:40:29 Jeff Smith

What these systems can do is incredible.

00:40:35 Jeff Smith

One of my favorite Substacks, it was funny, I recently read, the most recent article was about how six months ago I thought I was being so hyperbolic

00:40:49 Jeff Smith

in my hype of this, and I was a little embarrassed, and now I’m realizing that I wasn’t hyperbolic enough.

00:40:56 Jeff Smith

I mean, it’s just like there’s just so much potential here in every new model.

00:41:00 Jeff Smith

And it’s like, well, you were the best model for Tuesday to Thursday, and now there’s a new one on Friday that’s better.

00:41:06 Jeff Smith

And it’s just, we’re still in that phase where every week is such an exciting advancement.

00:41:11 Jeff Smith

And to a point you made earlier, expecting HR to stay on top of every single trend there is,

00:41:18 Jeff Smith

impossible in a way.

00:41:19 Jeff Smith

At one point, even amongst AI experts, it’s like, well, there’s no AI expert on earth that knows everything about this technology right now because it’s changing so fast and improving so quickly.

00:41:28 Nicole Roberts

Yeah.

00:41:29 Jeff Smith

And how does HR just set up the right corporate governance around IT concerns, security, legal concerns, while embracing the tools that are safe and secure?

00:41:41 Jeff Smith

and ensuring that people use them in the right way in order to increase performance, engagement, retention, business results, everything else that CEOs, CFOs, and CHROs are looking to improve.

00:41:53 Nicole Roberts

Yeah.

00:41:55 Nicole Roberts

If HR leaders can focus on just one thing for 2026 to strengthen their workforce and their managers, what would it be?

00:42:04 Jeff Smith

Just one thing is tough.

00:42:06 Nicole Roberts

It is tough.

00:42:08 Jeff Smith

I would say if I had to just choose one thing, and I think this might be cheating, but one thing I would just say, you need to start where you are.

00:42:17 Jeff Smith

So by start where you are, it’s like if you don’t have that written down set of explicit expectations for what a manager is accountable for, just start the list.

00:42:29 Jeff Smith

It doesn’t have to be a long list.

00:42:31 Jeff Smith

Do people understand their goals and priorities?

00:42:34 Jeff Smith

You know, do you empathize with them and feel with them and understand that you’re managing human beings?

00:42:40 Jeff Smith

Do you recognize them?

00:42:41 Jeff Smith

Do you encourage them?

00:42:43 Jeff Smith

Do you give them feedback as needed in coaching?

00:42:45 Jeff Smith

Are you supporting them in their career path?

00:42:47 Jeff Smith

It doesn’t have to be a big list.

00:42:49 Jeff Smith

So.

00:42:51 Jeff Smith

The reason why I don’t think this is cheating on your one thing is you can make the first draft of one of those lists in 10 minutes.

00:42:58 Jeff Smith

It doesn’t have to be a big list.

00:43:01 Jeff Smith

It doesn’t need, I need to consult 250 different leadership and management books.

00:43:05 Jeff Smith

Just make your starting list and then understand like, hey, this is where we’re at with this.

00:43:11 Jeff Smith

And then how are we going to ensure that our people not only know how to do these things, which can be done pretty quickly, part day

00:43:21 Jeff Smith

workshop, content, whatever, but then actually do them, which is what we’re talking about here, where it’s like performance management needs to be continuous.

00:43:31 Jeff Smith

Continuous feedback is like one of the hottest topics right now in all the conversations we’re having with customers where it’s like it’s not enough to just do the review once a year, have the once a year engagement survey.

00:43:40 Jeff Smith

It needs to be continuous.

00:43:42 Jeff Smith

But then how are we setting these people up, not only with just training, but also technology that works with the training to have them do these things every day?

00:43:50 Jeff Smith

Like this is an everyday effort, even for people who have written books about it.

00:43:55 Jeff Smith

It’s an everyday effort to show up the right way as a leader and manager.

00:43:59 Nicole Roberts

Yeah.

00:43:59 Jeff Smith

And if your people don’t wanna do that, like I already mentioned, then they shouldn’t be leaders and managers in your organization.

00:44:05 Nicole Roberts

That’s right.

00:44:06 Nicole Roberts

Yeah.

00:44:07 Nicole Roberts

Well, and I always say that it, it’s an honor and a privilege to be a leader and to be a manager and anybody that.

00:44:15 Nicole Roberts

behaves otherwise or says otherwise, doesn’t deserve the privilege.

00:44:20 Nicole Roberts

Yeah.

00:44:20 Nicole Roberts

I mean, if the organization is entrusting their most important aspect, I won’t call people an asset, of the business with you.

00:44:29 Nicole Roberts

The larger an organization gets, the less they can be

00:44:35 Nicole Roberts

dialed in and one-on-one with people.

00:44:37 Nicole Roberts

And so the purpose of the leader is to put that person in place to, you’re entrusting them with the care of those people and with the way that they feel about the organization and with the way that they feel about their work.

00:44:50 Nicole Roberts

And if you don’t recognize that, and if you’re in it for yourself and to make a name for yourself and to show how amazing you are and take credit for other people’s ideas,

00:45:02 Nicole Roberts

I mean, go work somewhere else like that.

00:45:04 Nicole Roberts

It’s not the place for you.

00:45:07 Nicole Roberts

This has been a wonderful conversation.

00:45:11 Nicole Roberts

Thank you so much for breaking down not just the technology, but really the human side of all of this, which is really, as you know, where the impact happens.

00:45:21 Nicole Roberts

For listeners who want to follow your work or learn more about what 15.5 is doing with performance and manager enablement and Kona AI, where should they go?

00:45:31 Jeff Smith

Yeah, thank you so much for having me, Nicole, and I’m eager to come back anytime.

00:45:35 Jeff Smith

For my own work, check me out on LinkedIn/JeffSmithPhD on LinkedIn.

00:45:42 Jeff Smith

And then for Fifteen Five, check us out at fifteenfive.com, one five, the word five spelled out, .com, or just search for Fifteen Five.

00:45:51 Jeff Smith

We’d love to talk to you about performance management anytime, as well as manager development and enablement.

00:45:56 Jeff Smith

These are topics that we work at Fifteen Five because we care about the topics.

00:46:00 Jeff Smith

And we’re, we’re happy to help and eager to speak with you soon.

00:46:03 Nicole Roberts

Wonderful.

00:46:04 Nicole Roberts

We’ll link to those resources in the show notes.

00:46:07 Nicole Roberts

Thank you again for joining us, Jeff, and thank you to everyone for listening.

00:46:11 Nicole Roberts

We’ll see you on the next episode of #HRTechChat.

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