Successful Influencing & Political Savvy Strategies

Technical excellence alone doesn't create impact—you need to navigate senior stakeholders, handle challenging behaviours, and work confidently within organizational politics. This highly interactive, practical workshop strengthens your influencing capabilities, illuminates the political dimension of audit work, and prepares you systematically for high-stakes conversations that shape audit credibility and influence.

Master influencing without formal authority using a proven 'hamburger model' balancing task, process, and climate. Reflect honestly on your influencing style, reframe misconceptions about organizational politics, and handle political dynamics ethically and constructively. You'll learn to spot tricky situations and difficult stakeholders early, think strategically several steps ahead, and leverage AI-based conversation simulators to rehearse and refine your approach. We'll see how AI tools let you test different influencing strategies, receive feedback on likely stakeholder reactions, and enter critical meetings with battle-tested approaches that maximize your chances of success.

Who Should Attend?

• Chief Audit Executives (CAEs) and senior audit managers seeking to take stock of their influencing approaches and enhance leadership effectiveness
• Audit leaders ready to proactively promote internal audit's value at senior organizational levels
• Experienced audit professionals who want to anticipate and defuse political and stakeholder challenges before they escalate

What Will You Learn?

By the end of this course, you will be able to:

• Assess your personal leadership and influencing style objectively—including strengths and blind spots
• Map key stakeholders (current and emerging) and clarify what they genuinely value and need from internal audit
• Recognize psychological factors driving irrational or unhelpful behaviours—and deploy practical tactics to manage them
• Navigate the political dimension of audit work with clarity—understanding constraints, agendas, and alliances while working ethically to achieve appropriate change
• Use AI-powered conversation simulators to rehearse sensitive discussions, test different approaches, and refine messaging before critical meetings

Course Programme

Models of Influencing

• Apply the Kano model to understand what different stakeholders truly value—and position audit work accordingly
• Gain deeper self-awareness of your leadership and influencing style, including how others experience you
• Recognize key biases and psychological traps in one-to-one interactions (the 'predictably irrational' factors) and learn countermeasures

Group Dynamics

• Decode how group dynamics operate in committees, boards, and senior teams—and their impact on audit messages and recommendations

Political Savvy

• Reframe 'political thinking' positively and ethically—as essential capability supporting organizational outcomes
• Identify and strengthen political skills needed to influence effectively at senior levels

Practical Application with AI Support

• Use AI-powered role-play simulators to rehearse approaches for critical meetings and sensitive discussions
• Test different messaging strategies and receive AI-generated feedback on likely stakeholder responses
• Develop and prioritize concrete follow-up actions with your most important stakeholders

CPE Competency Areas Covered

• Leadership and communication (Communication | Stakeholder management | Organizational influence)