How to Manage Your Internal Audit Manager

Problem: Many internal auditors believe they’re powerless in influencing the behaviors of their internal audit manager. Consequently, they resign themselves to accepting negative situations; situations for which they may be able to make tangible improvements if they just used the right techniques.

Solution: Learn to apply tools and techniques to help influence the behaviors and actions of your internal audit manager.

Advanced internal auditors know how to manage their internal audit manager.

For many of the lessons in this course, you may say to yourself “my internal audit manager would never go for that”.

I agree.

80% of the internal audit managers out there, are ‘by the book’, lack creativity and ingenuity, and play it safe. They have egos and they want it done their way. They’re risk adverse.

Your manager’s manager has drilled fear into your internal audit manager, and so on up the ladder. In some, perhaps most audit organizations, the unwritten rule is don’t rock the boat; don’t do anything that could cause unneeded attention or criticism; play it safe; don’t take chances; etc.

We go into this in-depth in other courses. For now, I just want you to focus on the given; that most internal audit managers will frown upon you trying to be creative or do things differently, even if you deliver improvements in efficiency and effectiveness.

So, what should you do in these situations? You should just give up, right?

Wrong.

First, odds are you’ll eventually get an internal audit manager who appreciates you using these skills that we teach.

Second, it’s up to you to figure out how to get your internal audit manager’s buy-in.

What do I mean by ‘manage your manager’?

I mean manipulate them, in a positive way, to get what’s best for you and the organization.

How do you do that?

The first thing to do is master the skills in our People and Communications lessons. There you’ll learn techniques for how to develop rapport, get along with people, and deal with difficult people.

But here are six specific tools and techniques that I’ve used to manage my internal audit managers or internal audit executives, and many other people in my life. 

By delivering on each of these items, you’ll find that eventually, you’ll have almost free reign to do whatever the hell you want.

1. Figure out what’s important to them; then give it to them — all of the time, every time. What’s important to them? Who the hell knows. It differs for each internal audit manager, so you’ll need to figure it out.
 
It should be delivering audits on time and on budget. But sometimes it’s highlighting your workpapers in teal highlighter rather than yellow highlighter, or checking in with them on text every 15 minutes of every day, or keeping your desk spotless, or calling them sir, madam, or your royalty, or buying them drinks after work, or whatever. 
 
Figure it out, then give it to them. No one else will; except you, and they’ll recognize you for it. Again, going over to their house and mowing their lawn every weekend will be hard to stomach for a while, but you won’t be working for them for long. You’ll be moving on or up the ladder, And when you do, you can have some other internal auditor come over and mow your lawn on the weekends.

2. Take things off their plate. Your internal audit manager is generally over-worked and under-paid; at least from their perspective. Offer to take on tasks that lighten their load. If they decline, start doing it anyway, tactfully.

3. Make their job easy. In addition to taking things off their plate, how else could you make their job easier? What are the tedious tasks that they have to do daily, weekly, monthly, and annually. Could you develop a system to make it less tedious? Can you find technologies that could help?

4. Make them look good. Compliment them in front of others; in particular their bosses. Is there some idea or project you can deliver to them, and let it be their idea, to make them look good to their executive?

5. Don’t be a PITA. Pain in the A$$. You’ll win just by letting the others be the PITAs.

6. Be like them. When dealing with them, model them. If they’re all business, you be all business. If they want to make small talk and talk feelings, you do the same. If they talk fast or slow, you do it. Bottom line: when you’re around them, be them.

After you start becoming effective at each of these six individual skills, take all of them and stack them. 

Any one of these tools can make a huge difference in your career. Stacking them can make that difference quicker and bigger. Imagine the impact if you applied all six of these, fully and consistently, to your manager or executive?

Congratulations. You’ve just joined the top 1% of the profession that actually can manage their internal audit manager. 

Good things are about to happen for you.

Check out our Newsletter “Secrets of Millionaire Internal Auditors — Mastering the Game of Internal Auditing & Getting Rich While Doing It” for street-smarts, in-the-trenches internal auditing hacks, techniques and strategies that you won’t get anywhere else.