Game development teams face unique pressures: tight production cycles, cross-functional complexity, and years of industry-wide restructuring. Leaders need practical ways to rebuild trust, clarify roles, and help every person understand how they uniquely contribute to shipping great games.
Mattering Lab specializes in exactly that. We leverage CliftonStrengths™, Gallup’s research-backed framework for talent development, to help game development teams build the psychological safety, clarity, and collaboration that make great work, and great games, possible.
We work primarily with game development and creative teams, so every session, retreat, and coaching conversation is built for your reality, not generic corporate frameworks retrofitted to gaming.
mike knox
I’m a lifelong gamer who believes interactive storytelling is one of the most uniquely human things we do. For more than a decade, I worked in higher education helping students unlock potential they didn’t know they had, eventually serving as founding Director of the Center for Student Leadership at UC Irvine. When I realized it was time to create space for others to lead, I turned to the games industry. The people making games aren’t wizards (as my childhood mind had me believe); they’re brilliant, creative storytellers doing meaningful work under intense pressure. I built Mattering Lab to support them, combining my passion for human development with my love for the medium that shaped me.
I founded Mattering Lab because I believe great teams are built on understanding: understanding how each person thinks, what they naturally do well, and how those talents combine to create something bigger than any individual could achieve alone. My work focuses on helping leaders and teams build that understanding in environments where the stakes are high and the work is deeply collaborative.
I’m a Gallup-Certified Advanced CliftonStrengths Trainer and Coach, with additional training in psychological safety (S.A.F.E.T.Y.™), courage-building leadership (Dare to Lead), and engagement (Gallup Engagement Champion). I hold a B.A. in Psychology from UC Irvine and an M.A. in Higher Education & Organizational Change from UCLA.
My leadership philosophy is simple: people don’t need to be fixed. They need to be seen, understood, and given the conditions to do their best work. When leaders shift from “what’s wrong here?” to “what’s strong here?”, everything changes. Trust deepens, collaboration sharpens, and teams ship better games.
Outside of coaching, I’m a novice sidewalk chalk artist, regular Dungeon Master, and proud partner and father who believes in using business as a force for good. That’s why Mattering Lab donates 10% of all proceeds to causes that matter to the gaming community.
mike knox, Founder, Trainer, & Coach
Top 5 CliftonStrengths™
- Strategic
- Ideation
- Futuristic
- Connectedness
- Self-Assurance
It’s dangerous to go alone…
Take this…
NEW GAME: BUILD FOUNDATIONS
Three core programs that build on each other. Start where your team is at, then level up.
Level 1:
Strengths Foundations
$5,000
2 HOURS
An introduction to strengths-based development.
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Understand each person’s talent profile and how it shapes the team
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Apply strengths immediately to daily collaboration
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Build a shared language that cuts friction and adds clarity
Includes 10 CliftonStrengths™ 34 Report assessments + 2 coaching sessions
Level 2 · MOST POPULAR
Team Alignment
$9,500
HALF DAY · 2 HOURS
An immersive experience that deepens the foundations
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Reveal team-wide strengths patterns, superpowers, and blind spots
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Practice strengths-based collaboration on real challenges
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Set norms that speed decisions and strengthen accountability
Includes 10 CliftonStrengths™ 34 Report assessments + 4 coaching sessions
Level 3:
Applied Leadership
$18,000
FULL DAY · 8 HOURS
Strengths plus high-impact leadership modules, chosen for your team’s biggest challenges:
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Change Readiness
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Psychological Safety
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Coaching & Feedback
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Team Engagement & Motivation
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Inclusive Leadership
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Communication
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Trust
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And more
Includes 10 CliftonStrengths™ 34 Report assessments + 8 coaching sessions
*Additional assessments: $60/person | Additional coaching: $500/session
NEW GAME+: GO DEEPER
Set the foundations first or jump straight to these options to sustain the change, embed it in real workflows, and develop your leaders one-on-one.
Custom solutions: every offering can be tailored to your team’s size, challenges, and goals, including in-person or virtual delivery, extended coaching for key leaders, and integration with your production cycles
Multi-Day Retreats
FROM $25,500
1.5 DAYS · 12 HOURS to 3 DAYS · 24 HOURS
Custom-designed, immersive experiences that reset team dynamics, rebuild trust, and accelerate alignment away from daily distractions.
| 1.5 days | from $25,500 | |
| 2 days | MOST POPULAR | from $32,000 |
| 3 days | from $45,000 |
Includes 10 CliftonStrengths™ 34 Report assessments + up to 10 individual coaching sessions (before and/or after the retreat) to deepen integration and sustain momentum.
*In-person only. Travel and venue logistics managed by client.
Learning Journeys
FROM $35,000
3 MONTHS · 6 MONTHS · 9 MONTHS · 12 MONTHS
Sustained development that embeds strengths-based leadership into real workflows, team rhythms, and production cycles through custom workshops, one-one-one coaching, and real world application.
| 3 months | from $35,500 | |
| 6 months | from $65,000 | |
| 9 months | from $90,000 | |
| 12 months | from $110,000 |
Includes custom design, progress measurement, ongoing adaptation, and 10 CliftonStrengths™ 34 Report assessments. All Learning Journeys incorporate coaching support, typically monthly group sessions plus individual coaching touchpoints. Exact structure designed collaboratively based on team size, journey length, and development goals.
ASSESSMENTS
Every development journey starts with understanding where you are. These research-backed assessments provide the foundation for targeted growth and help teams build a shared language for collaboration.
CliftonStrengths™ Assessment & 34 Report
$60 per person
Gallup’s CliftonStrengths™ assessment reveals each person’s top talents across 34 themes, revealing and providing common language for the natural ways they think, feel, and behave. It’s the foundation for everything we do together.
What’s included:
- Individual Top 34 theme sequence
- Personalized Strengths Insight Report
- Access to Gallup’s digital resources and learning tools
With any workshop, retreat, or learning journey: 10 assessments included
Additional assessments: $60 per person (Gallup’s rate—we handle all logistics)
S.A.F.E.T.Y™ Assessment
$70 per person
The S.A.F.E.T.Y.™ Assessment (Academy of Brain-based Leadership) measures psychological safety and team dynamics through a neuroscience lens. It helps teams understand how their environment supports or inhibits trust, collaboration, and performance.
Best for teams focused on:
- Rebuilding trust after organizational change
- Strengthening psychological safety
- Understanding team dynamics at a neurological level
- Complementing strengths work with brain-based insights
Available as a standalone assessment or integrated into custom learning journeys and retreats. (The Academy of Brain-based Leadership’s rate—we handle all logistics)
About CliftonStrengths™️
CliftonStrengths™ is Gallup’s research-backed framework for talent development, created by Don Clifton, the Father of Strengths Psychology. His philosophy was simple: a person’s weaknesses hardly improve, but their strengths develop infinitely.
The CliftonStrengths™ assessment measures talent across 34 themes: the natural ways we think, feel, and behave as unique individuals. These talents are the foundation of strengths development. The 34 themes are organized into four domains: Executing, Influencing, Relationship Building, and Strategic Thinking.
But the assessment is just the start. Real improvement happens when people develop their talents through intentional practice, coaching, and application. A strength is the ability to consistently produce nearly perfect performance in a specific task. It develops when we invest in our natural talents by adding knowledge, skills, and practice.
Why strengths-based development works:
For centuries, we’ve been fixated on fixing what’s wrong. Doctors studied disease to learn about health. Psychologists investigated sadness to learn about joy. Therapists looked into divorce to learn about happy marriage. CliftonStrengths™ flips that approach. Instead of asking “What’s broken?” we ask “What’s strong here?”
The research is clear: people who use their strengths every day are six times more likely to be engaged at work and three times more likely to report having an excellent quality of life. Teams that focus on strengths see 12.5% higher productivity and 8.9% greater profitability. When teams shift from deficit-thinking to strengths-thinking, everything changes. People gain clarity about their unique contributions. Collaboration improves because teams understand how different talents complement each other. Trust deepens because people feel seen and valued for who they actually are, not who they’re supposed to become.
What CliftonStrengths enables:
- Leaders understand how to motivate and develop each team member based on their natural talents
- Teams build shared language for collaboration and reduce friction around different working styles
- Individuals gain confidence in their unique value and stop trying to be someone they’re not
- Organizations create cultures where people do more of what they naturally do best
There is no one way to lead. Brenda Romero leads with very different strengths than Mike Morhaime. Amir Satvat leads with very different strengths than Leanne Loombe. Great leaders lead from their unique strengths, not from attempting to become someone they’re not.
That’s what we help teams discover: how to lead, collaborate, and ship great games by building on what’s already strong.
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Social Impact
Gamers for CHOC is an industry-specific initiative to raise funds for Rady Children’s Health Orange County. To date, Gamers for CHOC has brought together more than 50 organizations in gaming to raise over $700,000, more than $70,000 of which was raised by Mattering Lab through a project our founder, mike knox, calls Chalk for CHOC. Give to CHOC here.
From February 1 through July 31 every year 10% of all Mattering Lab proceeds will be donated to Rady Children’s Health Orange County through Gamers for CHOC.
Women in Games International (WIGI) is a 501c3 nonprofit organization that champions a safe, inclusive, and diverse workforce in the video game, tabletop, and esports industries with equal access and opportunities for all. Mattering Lab supports WIGI with direct donations as well as pro bono training sessions for the WIGI Mentorship Program. Give to WIGI here.
From August 1 through January 31 every year 10% of all Mattering Lab proceeds will be donated to Women in Games International.
Contact
Email us at info[at]matteringlab.com
For more detailed information on Mattering Lab training and coaching options, download the Mattering Lab Overview