Online: Master the Art of Strategic Influence: Political Savvy for Internal Audit Leaders

Technical excellence alone won’t drive audit transformation or achieve the GRC changes you want. This workshop equips you with the sophisticated influencing skills and political acumen that distinguish the best audit leaders from competent managers.

Core Focus: Navigate complex stakeholder dynamics, decode organizational politics, and build influence without formal authority—while maintaining your ethical compass.

Key Takeaways

Strategic Influence Architecture

• Deploy the Kano model to decode what truly drives your stakeholders
• Master the «hamburger model» for balancing task delivery with relationship capital
• Diagnose your influence style and adapt it for maximum impact

Psychological Edge

• Recognize and neutralize cognitive biases that derail critical conversations
• Navigate group dynamics that can make or break audit initiatives
• Transform «predictably irrational» behaviours into influence opportunities

Political Intelligence

• Reframe office politics from toxic game to strategic tool
• Map hidden agendas and power structures
• Build alliances that amplify your audit impact
• Handle «tricky situations» and challenging executives with finesse

Practical Application

• Apply Action Learning techniques to your live challenges
• Create targeted stakeholder strategies
• Develop your personal influence roadmap

Who should attend?

Heads of internal audit and senior managers ready to elevate their strategic impact and proactively position audit as a value driver—not just a compliance function.

CPE

You will earn 7 CPE credits (Leadership & Communication) for CIA, CRMA and Diplomert internrevisor

Instructor

James C. Paterson is former head of audit for AstraZeneca PLC and has been consulting and training for the past 10 years for the IIA in Belgium, Finland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland and the UK.

He is the author of the book “Lean Auditing” and Root Cause Analysis and System Thinking and has spoken at several IIA International Conferences and also the ECIIA conference. He contributed to the IIA global team that worked on developing practice guidance for internal audit plans.

Learn how to play the game. Stop playing defence.
Start shaping the conversation and shifting mindsets.