LEADERSHIP IN AUDITING: FOR AUDITORS, EXAMINERS, AND ANALYSTS

  • MASTER the prized attributes of highly effective audit managers.

  • ENHANCE your role as a leader and improve the performance of the audit team.

  • LEARN a project management framework to successfully lead any audit program.

  • HONE your communication skills, both oral and written, and find new ways to help your team members reach their highest potential.

Course Description

What are the essential skills for people management versus project management? How does the project manager’s role as applied to an auditing function differ from the every-day management of a business division?

Leadership in an organization’s auditing division is far more challenging than most people realize. While external auditors come and go, internal auditors must be aware of, navigate, and maintain their personal and professional relationships in the organization each and every day. Audit managers must be highly effective at their job, finding weaknesses of the organizational systems and culture, while still maintaining high performing working relationships with their organization leaders and their audit team members. All of these dynamics must be managed while communicating what can be at times incredibly difficult and confronting findings and failures of the organization to leadership and teams on a routine basis.

COURSE OPTIONS

  • 8 to 12 Hour Versions in Person

  • Online Live with Instructor

  • Virtual Training

Detailed Course Content

Day 1 – Why Can’t We all Just Get Along? The 8 Essential Practices of Leaders

Day 1 focuses heavily on soft-skills development that all managers must master to maintain high performance for themselves and their teams. This mini-workshop is adapted from Ms. Frisch’s highly reviewed Defying Gravity Leadership Workshop and is also soon to be available as two books on leadership titled Change Yourself/Change Others and Lead Yourself/Lead Others.

  • The Illusion of Management Control in the Modern Workplace
  • Which direction do you and your team point? The Leadership Compass
  • The 7 Baggages that Sink Managers (and everyone else) in Organizations
  • No body Nobody
  • It’s Your Fault (And that’s a good thing!)
  • The Emotionally Resilient Manager
  • The Power of Commitment
  • Excellence Over Perfection – Making Peace with the “F” Word
  • What, me worry?
  • Swallow the Frog
  • What you Speak You Create

Day 2 – Who’s in Charge Here? The Audit Leader/Project Manager

Day 2 focuses on project management and successfully executing an audit as an Audit Leader from both a Strategic and Tactical standpoint using our 10-Step Framework for Success. Topics covered in Day 2 include:

  • Standards Review (What are the basic must-do standards of an Audit Leader)
  • The 10-Step Framework for Success
  • Surveying and Planning Memos
  • Audit Tools
  • Audit Controls and Fraud Prevention
  • Staffing Plans and Work papers (Standards and Review)
  • Quality Control
  • Introduction to Root Cause Analysis

Day 3 – What Did You Say? Critical Communication (Written/Verbal)

Day 3 focuses on the various modes of communication involved in a successful audit and how the Audit Manager can ensure they and their team have mastered communication tools and techniques that work for internal communication within the audit team and external communication to the groups being audited.  Topics covered in Day 3 includes:

  • Motivational Interviewing
  • Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP)
  • Conflict Resolution & Mediation (within team and with auditees)
  • Team Communication (pre-audit, during audit, post-audit)
  • Team Performance (giving and receiving positive and negative feedback and appraisal of leader/team)
  • Essential Strategies for Reporting Findings (Exit Interviews/Written Reports/Management Briefings)

Day 4 – So Now What? Tying it All Together (Leadership Skills Practice)
(OPTIONAL FACILITATED WORKDAY WITH INSTRUCTOR) 

Day 4 is a half-day session where each audit manager in the course will be the Leader, work with a team and work scenarios and real life situations where they will be expected to apply skills gained in the class. They will receive coaching from the trainer and peers to gain comfort and confidence in their roles.