Dr John Kenworthy

My first job was in the office of an insurance company at the ripe old age of 14. It was the Easter break and I spent two weeks filing and finding files for people. One day, one of the agents sent me to find a file for a particular client, and I couldn’t find it.

I reported this back to the agent, who needed it desperately to present to his boss. He glanced over to the bosses office and saw him berating a fellow staff member. The door opened and out cam a tearful secretary. The agent then told me that I had to tell the boss that I couldn’t find the file, because the boss was in a bad mood, and it was my fault anyway… Not knowing any better, I did so. Got an earful and left the boss’s office with a ‘flea in my ear’. It turns out that I did the exact opposite of the DARN approach. But I was 14 at the time. I meet clients almost daily who need to deliver bad news… so go ahead and darn it:

Or, perhaps you trusted your team and now you have empowerment run amok. You don’t want to blame… but you’re mad too. And worse, she might have to tell her boss. How do you tell your boss the bad news?

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