Reinventing the Manager: Lessons from the Bossholes

At ISSA Show North America 2025 on Monday, John Broer of Real Good Ventures used a simple metaphor—a traffic roundabout—to reframe management for today’s workplace. Yesterday’s “stoplight” model rewarded command-and-control; tomorrow’s leaders design systems that trust competent people to navigate with autonomy. The goal is to keep teams out of the “bosshole zone” by developing people, not just directing tasks.

Broer’s core message in his Reinventing the Manager: Lessons from the Bossholes^® landed in six big ideas:

The problem is systemic. Many organizations still push high performers into management as the only path up, then starve them of training. The fix is structural: build wide, respected individual-contributor tracks and a narrow, selective path for people leadership.

Change the concept of the “manager. Make the first line of every manager job description “Develop other people.” Manage the process, lead through influence, and give appropriate autonomy. Hiring must optimize job fit and manager fit from the start; if that upstream step is wrong, downstream engagement and performance suffer.

Stop promoting the wrong people. Tenure and technical chops aren’t proxies for people leadership. Look for self-awareness, adaptability, delegation, reliability, curiosity, communication, and empathy—and ask candidates whether they truly want to manage humans.

Trust and psychological safety are foundational. Don’t rely on gut feel. Use validated, simple, scalable assessments to help managers understand themselves and their impact. Pair “your data” with “team data” before deciding who should do what work.

Treat EQ as non-negotiable. Emotional quotient skills—self-awareness, self-regulation, social skills, motivation, empathy—can be taught and measured. Assess managers, coach gaps, and revisit regularly.

People decisions backed by reliable data. Broer’s mantra is “data, not drama.” Engagement, retention, and performance rise when you sequence the work correctly: job fit → manager fit → team fit → culture as the result, not the remedy.

The game plan

Broer suggested the following for attendees:

• Make the manager’s role crystal clear: “Develop other people.”
• Make self-awareness a standard and use validated, simple, scalable assessments.
• Train managers to actively seek regular feedback (not once a year).
• Check engagement levels and act on the findings.
• Require onboarding and ongoing management/leadership development.
• Consider refitting managers back to contributor roles when it’s a better fit.

Roundabouts work when drivers understand the rules and trust each other. So do teams.