The data has been clear for decades: people don't leave companies, they leave managers.
Gallup's research puts the number at 70%. Seventy percent of the variance in employee engagement is attributable to the manager. Not compensation. Not benefits. Not the mission statement on the wall. The manager.
When a team has high turnover, the instinct is to blame the market, the industry, or the employees themselves. "Nobody wants to work anymore." "We can't compete on salary." "This generation has no loyalty."
The data says otherwise. The data says look at the manager.
But here's what the data doesn't say loudly enough: the manager is rarely the problem. The system that created the manager is the problem. The manager is the symptom.
Companies promote top performers into management roles without training them to manage. They give managers responsibility for retention without giving them tools to retain. They measure managers on output while ignoring the behaviors that drive their best people away. Then, when turnover spikes, they blame the manager.
The manager didn't fail. The system failed the manager.
This is the manager turnover problem. And until companies address the system, they'll keep losing people and blaming the wrong cause.
The 70% Number: What It Actually Means
When Gallup says 70% of engagement variance is attributable to the manager, they're not saying managers are 70% responsible for turnover. They're saying something more specific and more useful.
Engagement variance means the difference between highly engaged teams and disengaged teams. Within the same company, with the same compensation, the same benefits, the same executive leadership, some teams thrive while others struggle. The variable that explains most of that difference is the direct manager.
This finding has been replicated across industries, geographies, and company sizes. It's one of the most robust findings in organizational psychology.
What this means practically:
Two teams sit on the same floor. Same company. Same pay bands. Same HR policies. Team A has 8% annual turnover. Team B has 28% annual turnover. The difference isn't the company. The difference is the manager.
But the question most companies ask is wrong. They ask: "What's wrong with the manager of Team B?"
The better question: "What does the manager of Team A do differently, and why doesn't Team B's manager know how to do it?"
The answer is almost never that Team B's manager is incompetent or uncaring. The answer is usually that Team B's manager was never taught, never supported, and never given feedback on the behaviors that drive retention. They're managing the way they were managed, which is often the way their manager was managed, in a chain of inherited dysfunction that nobody examines.
How the System Creates the Problem
The manager turnover problem starts with how companies create managers.
The promotion trap:
Someone excels as an individual contributor. They're the best engineer, the top salesperson, the most productive analyst. The company rewards them with a promotion to management.
This makes intuitive sense. Promote your best people. Give them more responsibility. Let them multiply their impact through a team.
The problem: the skills that made them excellent individual contributors have almost no overlap with the skills required to manage people. Technical excellence doesn't teach you how to have a difficult conversation. Sales performance doesn't teach you how to develop someone's career. Analytical skill doesn't teach you how to notice when an employee has mentally checked out.
The newly promoted manager receives congratulations, a title change, and a team. What they rarely receive: training on how to manage, a mentor who's done it before, clear expectations for what good management looks like, or feedback when they're getting it wrong.
The training gap:
Most companies provide some management training. A two-day workshop. An online course. A library of videos.
This training typically covers compliance topics (harassment prevention, documentation requirements), administrative processes (how to use the performance review system, how to approve PTO), and high-level concepts (servant leadership, emotional intelligence, growth mindset).
What it rarely covers: the specific daily behaviors that drive engagement and retention. How to run a one-on-one that surfaces real concerns. How to notice when an employee has entered their 67-day window. How to have a career conversation that makes someone feel seen. How to give feedback that improves performance without damaging trust.
The gap between what training teaches and what managers need to know is where turnover grows.
The feedback void:
Individual contributors receive regular feedback on their work. Managers review their output, quality metrics track their performance, customers respond to their products.
Managers receive almost no feedback on their management. Their output is team performance, which has many variables. Quality metrics for management barely exist. And their "customers," the employees they manage, have every incentive to hide their true experience.
An employee won't tell their manager "your one-on-ones feel pointless" or "I don't think you value my input" or "I've started looking for other jobs because of how you treated me in that meeting." The power dynamic makes honesty dangerous.
So managers operate in a void. They assume things are fine because nobody tells them otherwise. They're often genuinely shocked when people resign. "I had no idea they were unhappy."
They didn't know because nobody could tell them.
The measurement problem:
Companies measure what they value. They measure revenue, output, deadlines, and deliverables. They measure managers on whether their teams ship on time and hit targets.
They rarely measure the behaviors that predict whether those teams will exist in twelve months.
A manager who hits every deadline while burning through three employees per year often looks successful in the metrics that matter to leadership. The turnover cost gets absorbed by HR's recruiting budget, not charged back to the manager's P&L. The institutional knowledge loss doesn't appear on any dashboard. The remaining team's declining engagement doesn't trigger an alert until it becomes attrition.
The system incentivizes short-term output over long-term retention. Then the system blames managers when retention suffers.
The Behaviors That Drive People Away
Manager behaviors that cause turnover are rarely dramatic. They're accumulated moments that shift how an employee experiences their job.
Taking credit, assigning blame.
The manager presents the team's work as their own achievement. When things go wrong, the team hears about it. This pattern teaches employees that success is invisible and failure is punished. Over time, they stop investing discretionary effort. Why go above and beyond when above gets claimed and beyond gets blamed?
Canceling one-on-ones.
The meeting is on the calendar. It gets moved. Then moved again. Then skipped "just this week." The pattern signals that the employee's time and concerns are less important than whatever else is happening. Employees notice. They stop bringing issues to one-on-ones because they're not confident the one-on-one will happen. The manager loses visibility into problems. Problems become resignations.
Treating feedback as annual.
The performance review happens once a year. Feedback is saved up and delivered in a single overwhelming session. The employee learns what they did wrong eight months ago and wonders why nobody mentioned it at the time. They feel ambushed, not developed. The manager thinks they're being thorough. The employee thinks they've been set up to fail.
Making decisions without input.
The manager decides and announces. The team wasn't consulted. Their expertise wasn't considered. This happens once and employees notice. It happens repeatedly and employees conclude their input doesn't matter. The first few times, they push back. Then they stop pushing back. The manager interprets silence as alignment. It's actually the first sign of checking out.
Hoarding opportunity.
Growth assignments go to the same people. Development opportunities aren't discussed. Promotion criteria remain mysterious. Employees who ask about advancement get vague answers or deflection. They conclude there's no path forward. They start looking for a path elsewhere.
Managing through email.
Difficult conversations happen in writing. Feedback arrives in Slack. Conflict gets addressed in passive-aggressive messages. The manager avoids the discomfort of direct conversation. The employee reads tone into text that may not have been intended. Misunderstandings compound. The relationship deteriorates without either party quite knowing why.
Changing expectations without warning.
What mattered last month no longer matters. Priorities shift without explanation. Work gets discarded or redirected. Employees feel like they're chasing a moving target. They learn that effort doesn't reliably lead to recognition because what counts as good keeps changing. Eventually they stop trying to hit a target that won't stay still.
None of these behaviors come from malice. They come from managers who were never taught differently, never received feedback, and never saw the impact of their actions on retention.
Why Managers Don't See It Coming
A manager learns an employee is leaving. They're surprised. They didn't see any warning signs. From their perspective, everything was fine.
From the employee's perspective, the signs were obvious. They just weren't visible to the manager.
The honesty gap:
Employees don't tell managers the truth about their experience. The power dynamic is too risky. An employee who tells their manager "I think you're a poor communicator" might be right, but they've now created a political problem for themselves.
So employees express dissatisfaction indirectly. They become quieter in meetings. They stop volunteering for projects. They update their LinkedIn profile. They take more PTO. They do everything except say the words "I'm unhappy and here's why."
Managers who expect direct communication miss indirect signals. They're waiting for a conversation that employees will never initiate.
The proximity problem:
Managers see their own intentions. Employees see their manager's impact.
A manager cancels a one-on-one because they're genuinely overwhelmed. They know they value the employee. They'll reschedule next week. From their perspective, it's a minor scheduling issue.
The employee sees a pattern. Third cancellation this quarter. They must not be a priority. Their concerns must not matter. From their perspective, it's evidence of where they stand.
Both perspectives are valid. Neither knows what the other is experiencing. And the manager's position means they're less likely to find out.
The success blindness:
Managers who hit their targets assume their management is working. The team shipped on time. The numbers look good. The system must be functioning.
What they don't see: the employee who stayed late every night because they didn't know how to push back on unrealistic deadlines. The employee who delivered despite their manager, not because of them. The employee who's already interviewing but maintaining performance to preserve their reference.
Strong output can mask failing management. The manager sees results and assumes health. The results come from employees who are exhausting themselves, and exhausted employees eventually leave.
The exit interview misdirection:
When employees finally resign, managers learn why from exit interviews. The employee says "better opportunity" or "career growth." The manager accepts this explanation because it doesn't implicate them.
Exit interviews don't reveal why people actually leave. They reveal what people are willing to say. An employee won't say "my manager made me feel invisible" when that manager might be called as a reference. They'll say something safe. The manager hears the safe answer and learns nothing useful.
Manager Enablement vs. Manager Training
Most companies approach the manager turnover problem through training. A workshop on difficult conversations. A course on emotional intelligence. A leadership offsite with team-building exercises.
Training helps. It's not sufficient.
Training provides knowledge. Enablement provides daily support. The gap between knowing what to do and consistently doing it is where most managers fail.
What training provides:
Frameworks for feedback conversations.
Concepts like psychological safety and servant leadership.
Compliance requirements and HR processes.
A shared vocabulary for discussing management.
What training doesn't provide:
Real-time feedback when a one-on-one goes poorly.
Reminders to check in with the employee who seemed off last week.
Templates for career conversations that actually work.
Data on which team members might be flight risks.
Accountability for whether the training concepts get applied.
A manager can complete every training module and still cancel one-on-ones, avoid difficult conversations, and fail to notice when employees disengage. Training creates awareness. Enablement creates behavior change.
The enablement shift:
Manager enablement means building systems that support good management behaviors daily, not annually.
It means one-on-one templates that prompt meaningful questions, not just status updates. It means pulse data that shows which team members' engagement is declining before they resign. It means nudges that remind managers to follow up on the concern an employee raised last week. It means making the right management behaviors easier than the default behaviors.
The CLOVER Framework was designed for enablement, not just training. It translates retention research into specific daily actions that managers can implement with support, not just learn in a workshop and forget.
The CLOVER Response to Manager-Driven Turnover
The CLOVER Framework gives managers a structure for the daily behaviors that prevent turnover. Each element addresses a specific gap that typically exists between managers and their teams.
Communication
Most managers communicate when they have something to say. CLOVER managers communicate before they're asked.
The practice: Weekly team updates that acknowledge reality. One-on-ones that happen consistently, not when convenient. Proactive sharing of context that helps employees understand decisions.
Why it matters: Employees who feel informed feel included. Employees who feel excluded start looking for somewhere they'll be included.
From "they'll ask if they need to know" to "they shouldn't have to ask."
Learning
Most managers support learning when employees request it. CLOVER managers create learning opportunities proactively.
The practice: Identifying growth areas for each team member. Creating stretch assignments that build skills. Allocating time for development that isn't consumed by immediate deliverables.
Why it matters: Employees who feel stagnant leave. Employees who feel they're growing have a reason to stay.
From "we'll discuss development at review time" to "development is ongoing."
Opportunity
Most managers discuss opportunity when promotions are available. CLOVER managers discuss opportunity before employees start wondering if it exists.
The practice: Regular career conversations. Transparent criteria for advancement. Honest assessment of timelines and paths.
Why it matters: Employees who can't see a future at your company look for a future elsewhere.
From "I'll mention opportunities when they come up" to "I'll make sure they know what's possible."
Vulnerability
Most managers project confidence and control. CLOVER managers acknowledge difficulty and uncertainty.
The practice: Admitting when you don't have answers. Sharing your own challenges appropriately. Creating safety for employees to express concerns without fear.
Why it matters: Employees mirror their manager's emotional honesty. If the manager pretends everything is fine, employees pretend too. Problems stay hidden until they become departures.
From "I need to appear in control" to "I need to be honest."
Enablement
Most managers assign work. CLOVER managers remove obstacles to work.
The practice: Regular identification of friction points. Active removal of bureaucratic barriers. Investment in tools and processes that help rather than hinder.
Why it matters: Employees who feel blocked burn out. Employees who feel enabled perform.
From "here's what you need to deliver" to "what's making delivery harder than it should be?"
Reflection
Most managers check in on projects. CLOVER managers check in on people.
The practice: One-on-ones that ask "how are you?" and wait for real answers. Pulse checks that track engagement between annual surveys. Follow-up on concerns raised in previous conversations.
Why it matters: You can't address problems you don't know about. And employees won't volunteer problems unless you create consistent space for them.
From "we covered that last time" to "let me ask again and really listen."
For Executives: The System Changes That Matter
Individual managers can improve their behaviors. Sustainable change requires system-level shifts.
Change what you measure:
Add retention metrics to manager scorecards. Not just "did anyone quit" but leading indicators: engagement pulse trends, one-on-one completion rates, internal mobility requests.
When turnover costs hit the manager's budget, not just HR's recruiting budget, managers pay attention to retention.
Change what you train:
Move from annual workshops to ongoing enablement. Short, frequent reinforcement beats intensive, forgettable training.
Focus training on specific behaviors: how to run a career conversation, how to notice disengagement signals, how to give feedback that lands. Skip the abstract leadership philosophy.
Change who you promote:
Technical excellence shouldn't be the only path to management. Create IC tracks that offer growth without requiring people management.
When you do promote to management, treat it as a new job requiring onboarding, not a reward for past performance. Give new managers mentors who've made the transition successfully.
Change how you support:
Give managers tools, not just expectations. One-on-one templates. Engagement dashboards. Career conversation guides. Make good management easier than default management.
Build feedback loops that let managers know how they're doing without requiring employees to risk honesty directly.
Change who stays:
Some managers won't adapt. The behaviors that drive turnover become too ingrained. When the system changes and a manager doesn't, that's a performance issue.
Protecting a high-output manager who burns through people sends a message to everyone else: turnover doesn't matter here. The cost of keeping them exceeds the cost of replacing them when you account for the team members they'll drive away.
The ROI of Fixing Manager Behaviors
The business case for manager enablement is straightforward.
The cost of manager-driven turnover:
A company with 500 employees and 15% annual turnover loses 75 people per year. At an average replacement cost of $150,000 (mid-range SHRM estimate), that's $11.25 million annually in turnover costs.
If 70% of engagement variance is attributable to managers, and engagement predicts turnover, then manager behavior is a primary lever on millions of dollars of cost.
The cost of enablement:
Manager enablement programs vary in cost depending on approach. Training alone costs less but changes less. Comprehensive enablement, including tools, ongoing support, and accountability systems, requires more investment.
But even an aggressive estimate of $2,000 per manager annually for enablement is a fraction of the turnover cost that enablement prevents. Reduce turnover by 20% through better management and the ROI is immediate.
The cost of doing nothing:
Companies that don't address manager-driven turnover absorb the cost invisibly. It shows up as recruiting expense, productivity loss, and institutional knowledge drain. But because it's distributed and ongoing, it never appears as a line item that demands attention.
Our turnover cost calculator helps leadership teams see the total, often for the first time. When turnover becomes a number instead of a vague concern, the investment case for manager enablement becomes obvious.
Frequently Asked Questions
It means that within the same company, teams with good managers retain employees while teams with poor managers lose them. The company-level factors (compensation, benefits, mission) matter less than the day-to-day experience of working for a specific person. Gallup research shows that 70% of the variance in employee engagement is attributable to the direct manager.
Some managers lack the aptitude or interest for people management. But most managers who drive turnover aren't incompetent or malicious. They're unsupported. They were promoted without training, manage without feedback, and operate without tools. The system set them up for behaviors that cause turnover, then blames them when turnover happens.
Training provides knowledge through workshops, courses, and content. Enablement provides ongoing support through tools, templates, reminders, and accountability systems. Training teaches managers what to do. Enablement helps them actually do it consistently. Most companies over-invest in training and under-invest in enablement.
Compare turnover rates across managers with similar team compositions. High variance suggests manager behavior is a factor. Look at exit interview data for patterns (though remember that exit interviews underreport manager issues). Track engagement pulse scores by team over time. When one team's scores consistently lag peers, the manager is likely a factor.
Calculate the total cost. A manager who hits targets but loses three employees per year may look successful in output metrics while costing hundreds of thousands in turnover. When you add replacement costs, productivity loss, and the impact on remaining team members, the high-output manager often costs more than they contribute. Retention isn't separate from performance. It is performance.
Behavior change can begin immediately. Impact on turnover takes longer because employees who've already decided to leave (entered their 67-day window) may not be recoverable. Expect 3-6 months before retention metrics shift measurably. Companies that sustain manager enablement efforts see cumulative improvement over 12-24 months.
Consistent, meaningful one-on-ones. Not status updates. Conversations that ask how the employee is doing, what's frustrating them, and where they want to go. Managers who maintain weekly one-on-ones with genuine attention to the person, not just the projects, see dramatically lower turnover than managers who skip, reschedule, or phone it in.
Frame it as a system problem. "We've promoted people to management without giving them the support to succeed. We're fixing that." Provide enablement as an investment in managers' success, not a remediation for their failure. Most managers want to be better. Give them tools instead of criticism.
Remote work amplifies existing manager behavior. Good managers who communicate proactively and check in consistently do fine remotely. Poor managers who relied on physical proximity to notice problems struggle more. The behaviors that prevent turnover matter more in remote environments, not less.
The Question That Reframes Everything
When turnover rises, leadership typically asks: "Why are people leaving?"
The better question: "What are managers doing that makes staying harder than leaving?"
What are managers doing that makes staying harder than leaving?
The answer is rarely one dramatic thing. It's accumulated moments. Canceled one-on-ones. Credit taken. Feedback delayed. Careers undiscussed. Decisions made without input.
Each moment is small. Together they create a gravitational pull toward the door.
The managers creating these moments usually don't know they're doing it. They're managing the way they were managed. They've never received feedback. They've never seen the data on how their behaviors connect to departures.
The system created this. The system can fix it.
See Where Manager Behavior Is Costing You
We help companies identify how manager behaviors contribute to turnover and what systemic changes would have the highest impact.
In a 15-minute Turnover Analysis call, we'll discuss:
How to measure manager-level turnover patterns
Which enablement interventions have the highest ROI
What a behavior-change system looks like in practice
No pitch. No pressure. Just a conversation about the system.
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