If you’re investing in employee experience initiatives but not seeing the engagement and retention results you hoped for, there’s a good chance you’re overlooking the most critical factor in the entire employee journey: the manager-employee relationship.

According to Gallup’s comprehensive research on employee experience and workplace culture, managers alone account for 70% of the variance in team engagement. Think about that. You can have the best onboarding program, competitive benefits, and a compelling mission statement—but if your managers aren’t equipped to lead with strengths and build strong team dynamics, your employee experience will fall flat.

The Seven Stages Where Managers Make or Break the Experience

Gallup identifies seven stages in the employee life cycle: Attract, Hire, Onboard, Engage, Perform, Develop, and Depart. While HR and leadership play important roles throughout this journey, the manager is the through-line connecting them all.

The manager is the one who:

• Translates your company culture into daily reality during onboarding
• Answers the fundamental question: “What is expected of me?”
• Provides the ongoing coaching that turns good employees into high performers
• Has the development conversations that determine whether top talent stays or leaves
• Shapes whether departing employees become brand ambassadors or cautionary tales

Yet here’s the uncomfortable truth: most managers aren’t prepared for this responsibility.

Research shows that 66% of managers have had no formal management training. We promote our best individual contributors and expect them to automatically know how to develop others. It’s no wonder that 57% of workers have quit at least one job because of a manager.

The Core Needs That Only Strong Teams Can Fulfill

Gallup’s research reveals that employees have stable core needs across all stages of the employee life cycle. Beyond the manager relationship, two of the most critical are role clarity and team dynamics.

Employees need to know:

• What is my role? Only about half of U.S. employees clearly understand what’s expected of them at work
• Who are my partners? People perform best when they trust their teammates and know they can rely on them

Here’s where strengths-based team coaching becomes transformative. When teams understand each other’s natural talents—when they know that Jordan’s “Strategic” thinking complements Maria’s “Activator” drive to get things done, or that Sam’s “Empathy” helps balance out the team’s heavy “Achiever” presence—everything changes.

Suddenly, role clarity isn’t just about tasks on a job description. It’s about understanding how your unique strengths contribute value to the team. Team dynamics shift from polite tolerance to genuine appreciation for what each person brings to the table.

Why Traditional Employee Experience Programs Aren’t Enough

Many organizations approach employee experience as an HR initiative—better onboarding checklists, engagement surveys, development platforms. These are important, but they often miss the mark because they don’t address the relationship at the heart of it all.

Consider these findings from Gallup:

• Only 12% of employees say their organization does a great job of onboarding
• Just 21% of employees globally (31% in the U.S.) are engaged at work
• Only two in 10 employees agree that their performance is managed in a way that motivates them to do outstanding work

These aren’t HR problems. They’re leadership and team development problems.

The data shows that employees respond best to:

• Regular, informal feedback on their work
• Frequent praise and recognition for excellent work
• Ongoing coaching conversations (not annual reviews)
• Managers who help them apply their strengths every day

This is exactly what strengths-based team coaching delivers.

The Five Questions Your Teams Need to Answer

Gallup’s research on exceptional onboarding experiences revealed five fundamental questions that every employee needs answered. When teams work together to address these through a strengths lens, the impact is profound:

1. “What do we believe in around here?” Culture isn’t what’s written in your values statement—it’s how people behave every day. Strengths-based teams embody culture by understanding how their collective talents serve the mission.

2. “What are my strengths?” Employees who can apply their strengths every day are 3.5 times more likely to say they had an exceptional onboarding experience. But knowing your strengths is just the start—understanding how they complement your teammates’ strengths is what creates excellence.

3. “What is my role?” When teams understand each member’s strengths, role clarity improves dramatically. You’re not just “the marketing manager”—you’re the team member whose “Ideation” and “Communication” strengths drive creative campaigns.

4. “Who are my partners?” Trust and collaboration deepen when you understand why your colleagues approach work the way they do. That person who always pushes back on your ideas? Their “Deliberative” strength is actually protecting the team from costly mistakes.

5. “What does my future here look like?” Career development conversations become more meaningful when they’re grounded in strengths. Instead of generic growth plans, you’re mapping paths that leverage what each person does best.

From Individual Coaching to Team Transformation

I’ve seen firsthand how strengths-based team coaching transforms workplace culture. When managers lead teams through a structured process of discovering, understanding, and leveraging each other’s CliftonStrengths, several things happen:

Communication improves. Teams develop a shared language for talking about how work gets done. Conflicts decrease because people understand different working styles aren’t personal—they’re strengths-based.

Collaboration strengthens. Instead of everyone trying to do everything, teams naturally divide work based on who’s best equipped to excel at each task.

Engagement rises. When people spend more time doing what they naturally do best, work becomes energizing rather than draining.

Retention increases. Employees who feel valued for their unique contributions—and who work on teams that truly function as teams—don’t leave.

Performance accelerates. High-performing teams aren’t just groups of talented individuals. They’re collections of complementary strengths working in concert toward shared goals.

The Manager as Strengths Coach

The most powerful shift happens when managers embrace their role as strengths coaches. Rather than trying to fix weaknesses or create identical team members, they learn to:

• Identify and name the unique strengths each person brings
• Create opportunities for people to apply their strengths to meaningful work
• Build partnerships between team members with complementary talents
• Provide feedback that builds on what’s already working well
• Design roles and responsibilities that leverage natural abilities

This isn’t soft skills training. It’s a practical, proven approach to driving business results through people.

What This Means for Your Organization

If you’re serious about improving employee experience, engagement, and retention, you need to invest where it matters most: in developing managers who can lead strengths-based teams.

This means moving beyond:

• Annual engagement surveys without action plans
• Generic leadership development programs
• Performance management systems that focus on gaps and weaknesses
• One-size-fits-all team building exercises

Instead, focus on:

• Equipping every manager with CliftonStrengths coaching capabilities
• Creating time and space for meaningful team development conversations
• Building structures that support ongoing strengths-based coaching
• Measuring what matters: team engagement, collaboration quality, and retention

The research is clear. The manager-employee relationship matters more than any other factor in the employee experience. And the fastest way to strengthen that relationship is through strengths-based team coaching.

Ready to Transform Your Team’s Experience?

If you’re a leader who wants to create the kind of employee experience that attracts top talent, builds belonging, and drives results, strengths-based team coaching is where transformation begins.

I work with organizations to develop high-performing teams through customized CliftonStrengths coaching that addresses your specific challenges—whether that’s improving collaboration, increasing engagement, reducing turnover, or developing managers into effective coaches.

Learn more about strengths-based team coaching and how it can transform your employee experience:katfrati.com/strengths-based-biz

Because at the end of the day, employee experience isn’t built by HR policies and programs alone. It’s built by managers who understand their people, teams who leverage their collective strengths, and cultures where everyone can do what they do best every single day.