In this week’s #jammingwithjason #internalauditpodcast I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Many of you are playing the game of your career without much help. The problem is, others in your organization are getting help, which means you are playing at a big disadvantage.
I’m not talking about a lack of resources or struggling to get budget and support. It’s about getting yourself the training, coaching, and support you need to play varsity-level sport … like your peers. It’s about having the right balance (e.g. American football: offense, defense, passing, running) to get you performing at an elite status.
Take a listen and see some of the areas where getting a little extra help, will go along way in helping you play the game of your career and life as a champion.
If you are a CAE and really serious about elevating the status of internal audit in your organization, improving your executive presence, and getting best practices and thought leadership from like-minded CAEs, the CAE Forum is for you.
Submit your application to join the Chief Audit Executive (CAE) Forum. We are accepting new member application until 31 January 2020. https://jasonmefford.mykajabi.com/caeforum
Jamming with Jason, the #1 #internalauditpodcast in the world has interviews and discussions (jam sessions) relevant to Chief Audit Executives and professionals in #internalaudit, #riskmanagement, and #compliance.
Transcript
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Jason Mefford: Welcome to another episode of jamming with Jason. Hey, welcome back. My friends, today I want to jump in and talk a little bit about playing the game without help.
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Jason Mefford: Equals disaster. So if you try to play a game and you don’t have any help. How that can end up in disaster for you.
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Jason Mefford: So I’m going to go through and talk a little bit about that, but also obviously give you some tips.
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Jason Mefford: For how you can avoid that disaster because that’s really what we’re trying to do is make sure that we don’t get ourselves in trouble. And I’m going to tell you up front. Many of you are competing as you are playing
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Jason Mefford: at a disadvantage. And I’m going to get more into that here in this episode. Now before we get started with today’s episode I just want to make sure and let everybody know that we are now.
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Jason Mefford: accepting new member applications for the chief audit executive forum. So if you are a chief audit executive
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Jason Mefford: And if you are serious about elevating the status of internal audit in your organization and in improving your executive presence.
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Jason Mefford: And being able to get best practices and thought leadership from like minded chief audit executives from around the world.
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Jason Mefford: If you’re that kind of person than the chief audit executive forum is right for you.
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Jason Mefford: And as I said, we’re accepting new member applications. Right now we only do this a couple times a year.
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Jason Mefford: And so if you are in that category. I’ve got a link down below. Make sure and click on the link. Check out the information submit your application and book your interview. Now I’m telling you this
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Jason Mefford: Because the open enrollment period is pretty short. You have to have your application in before the end of January for you to be considered for membership going forward. So get that in
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Jason Mefford: Now let’s get back to today’s topic which is playing the game without help equals disaster. So how I came up with what I wanted to talk to you today about is
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Jason Mefford: It’s football season in the United States. So I’ve been watching a lot of American football. Now, for those of you in other parts of the world. That’s not to confuse with what
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Jason Mefford: In America we call soccer and you call football, but this is American football gridiron and it’s a sport that I enjoy. I enjoy playing and also enjoy watching. And so since it’s football season. I’ve been watching a lot of football.
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Jason Mefford: And when you do that, you can notice you know that there’s each of the teams as they come in and they’re playing and competing with each other.
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Jason Mefford: Each team is trying to win, right. You want to score more points than the other team and end up walking away with a win. Now, just like football life can be a long game and it’s in fact a game that we are playing. And so this is why I want to talk a little bit about football.
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Jason Mefford: So you can tell you know when when when the team start playing everybody comes out and everybody’s excited and they get started.
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Jason Mefford: And they start playing and what inevitably happens is you know one team starts to do really well.
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Jason Mefford: The other team tries to make some adjustments and comes back and they kind of go back and forth and back and forth throughout the game.
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Jason Mefford: Now one of the things that makes the difference between a good or great football team and the one that usually ends up losing. There are several things.
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Jason Mefford: One of them is kind of relates to the mindset and some also relates to kind of the coaching and the support that they receive.
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Jason Mefford: So as an example, let me just kind of walk through kind of a typical scenario that you can end up seeing in the game. So the one team comes out and they really start off strong, you know, they go down and they score really quick.
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Jason Mefford: Maybe they have a turnover do something else they score. Again, really quick.
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Jason Mefford: And all of a sudden they’re up in the score a couple of scores. And so they’re feeling really good about themselves. Well, at that point, of course, the other team.
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Jason Mefford: Is trying to figure out what happened and make changes so that they can come back and so I remember there was this the one of the recent games that I was watching
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Jason Mefford: One team started off very strong in the first quarter and In American Football. It’s a 60 minute game made up a 415 minute quarters.
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Jason Mefford: And so what happened was the one team came out really strong in the first quarter and they ended up three scores ahead of the other team.
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Jason Mefford: And so they were feeling really good. They had some good quick wins. And so you can tell that the energy on the sideline was really great.
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Jason Mefford: This team was really excited, they thought that they were just going to blow away the other competitor.
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Jason Mefford: Now the other competitor, of course, was again trying to figure out what can they do different
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Jason Mefford: And so in the second quarter, they started to make some changes and they came back and scored pretty quickly and it ended up becoming a tie game again at halftime
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Jason Mefford: And so everything that that first team had done in the first quarter got kind of wiped away and now they have the second half of the game.
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Jason Mefford: To compete with each other. And so what happened was, you know, the team that came back in the third quarter, they continued to come back more and more and more and more.
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Jason Mefford: And all of a sudden, you could tell that the one team started to give up. They their, their mental toughness kind of went away. You could see that the energy on the sideline was not the same.
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Jason Mefford: And it was very obvious about, you know, partway into the third quarter that the one team would end up winning
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Jason Mefford: And you could tell because of the energy that was going on, but also there was something different. Now both of these teams were well coached but one was better coached than the other.
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Jason Mefford: When that first team got down to begin with, you know, instead of kind of pouting and say well as me, life is so hard. The coaches got involved and helped
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Jason Mefford: to instruct and coach the players on what they were doing wrong so that they could end up making changes.
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Jason Mefford: They were there to help correct to give guidance on what to do differently, but they were also there to encourage people
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Jason Mefford: You know, and one of the coaches said things like we’ve been here before him, and we know exactly what this is like. We can get through this.
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Jason Mefford: It’s those kind of things that we need to hear when we are down, you know, sometimes we get out ahead we have some quick wins. And then all of a sudden, things don’t go our way.
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Jason Mefford: And as a result of that, we start kind of getting down on yourself. We don’t know what to do. And without having some sort of support, like in a coach in the in the sporting example.
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Jason Mefford: We end up starting to get into our head, and we lose the game in our mind. And like I said, I’ve watched sports teams over and over. Do this.
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Jason Mefford: We’re very shortly into the game. The one team has effectively given up. Now, again, the difference between, you know, good teams and great teams and those that are just kind of
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Jason Mefford: A lot of times, ends up being the coaching the mental preparation of the team physical preparation of the team has had before they get started, but also the coaching and the support during the game as well.
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Jason Mefford: Now, excuse me. Another reason that I bring this up and and why it kind of ties in today with playing the game without help equals disaster is this
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Jason Mefford: Let’s assume that there’s two football teams playing and one of the football teams receives you know has very high quality coaches on their team.
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Jason Mefford: They have good players and they practice a lot. They do the work that they need to both the physical and the mental mindset work.
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Jason Mefford: During the practice, they get to to the game they have, they have a good plan. They start to execute their plan if they need to change things.
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Jason Mefford: The coaches are right there to help provide support and and kind of, you know, external view on what’s going on. Continue the motivation continue making changes.
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Jason Mefford: That team is going to do pretty well. Now, what if the other team shows up. And again, they’ve got pretty good athletes, but there’s no coaching staff.
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Jason Mefford: They’re just all individuals that are out there you know they’ve maybe trained very hard. Physically they’re good athletes, but they’ve never really played together as a team. They’re all just kind of out there as individuals without that support or without the coaching staff.
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Jason Mefford: How do you think that game is going to go. I think the team that has the support and the good coaching is going to kick the other ones. But, and that’s what ends up happening.
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Jason Mefford: You know, often again you can see where teams that really have just individual players that kind of do what they want to do and what they think is right.
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Jason Mefford: They don’t compete in the long term, as well as teams that are well coached and well trained in that have all of that support during the game.
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Jason Mefford: So why am I bringing this up. And here’s the dirty little secret that I wanted to let you in on that. I told you at the beginning of the podcast.
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Jason Mefford: And it’s this many of you are competing at a disadvantage so others in your organization. For example, you know, if you’re a chief audit executive
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Jason Mefford: The other executives in your organization are receiving coaching. And again, going through executive programs. They’re learning how to be an executive and are getting that support.
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Jason Mefford: What I find most of the time is chief audit executives are not getting some of that support.
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Jason Mefford: So of course when you are comparing or you’re trying to play the game of executive politics. Who do you think is going to win.
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Jason Mefford: The one who’s been cut the executive who’s been coached and trained and and knows what to do and has this you know executive programs support.
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Jason Mefford: Or the one that doesn’t have any of that support. Well, I gotta tell you, nine times out of 10 it’s going to be that person who has that support.
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Jason Mefford: So as I said in our, in our profession, a lot of executives are not getting the help they need the help if they want to be able to compete with
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Jason Mefford: And be on the same level as the other executives in their organization. Now this is true not only just for chief audit executives, but really for anybody in your career.
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Jason Mefford: If you’re not taking time right to develop yourself and develop the different skills that you need to where others in the organization are those other people are going to beat you in the game of life, so
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Jason Mefford: Let me go through and talk about a few things that you can do to be able to reduce or lower this disadvantage that many of you may have
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Jason Mefford: So the first one is, you’ll hear me talk a lot about, you know, it requires both technical and soft skills. If you ever want to get to be considered a trusted advisor.
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Jason Mefford: You have to have the balance of both. You have to be high and technical and high in soft skills. So here’s one of the mistakes that I see a lot of people doing
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Jason Mefford: They spend all their time on developing their technical skills and they’re not getting the soft skills training.
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Jason Mefford: So again, you may be very technical in what you are doing. But if you don’t have the soft skills, you will not be at the same level as your peers in the organization.
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Jason Mefford: They’re working on their soft skills. They’re getting that information they’re getting the support
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Jason Mefford: They’re having executive coaches, they’re participating in executive programs and they’re developing their soft skills. So if you are not. You are always going to be at a disadvantage to them so
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Jason Mefford: Excuse me. What do we do, we need to develop our soft skills we need to actually take time to be able to develop our soft skills.
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Jason Mefford: What are some of these things, you know, obviously around communication, but but in this instance, more so the verbal communication.
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Jason Mefford: Also things around influence how do you influence other people, you know, how do you build relationships with other people. How do you negotiate. How do you come to, you know, a mutually agreeable compromise.
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Jason Mefford: How do you, how do you make a business case, you know, that also is a soft skill. A lot of times people think, well, I’m just gonna, I’m just going to use the numbers and that’s going to make a business case.
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Jason Mefford: And that doesn’t happen in fact 80% of decisions are based on emotion. So it almost doesn’t matter what financials, you put there.
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Jason Mefford: If you can tell a good story, and you have the good soft skills, then you’re going to win. Okay, so that’s one of the things that you can start doing
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Jason Mefford: You can start trying to improve and give yourself those opportunities to where you can actually develop your soft skills.
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Jason Mefford: Now another thing is, you know, you really need to learn how to play the corporate game, if you will. OK.
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Jason Mefford: And now I know sometimes you know we like to think, well, we’re different. We’re independent. We don’t have to play those same games. Well, if, if
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Jason Mefford: Like if you go into a football game and everybody else is playing based on a set of rules and you decide that you want to be different. And you’re just going to play with some different rules.
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Jason Mefford: It’s not going to go well for you. You have to learn how to play the game and to be really to move into being an executive with executive presence.
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Jason Mefford: You really have to learn how to manage your stakeholders, you have to learn how to manage your staff and you have to learn how to manage yourself.
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Jason Mefford: There’s those three things that you have to learn how to do them and learn how to do them well.
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Jason Mefford: So just as I was talking before you know so much of the time we focus on stay color on technical skills, only we have to also balance soft skills.
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Jason Mefford: So in these other three areas. Again, we may spend a lot of time trying to learn how to, you know, manage or lead our staff.
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Jason Mefford: But we don’t spend enough time on learning how to kind of lead and influence stakeholders and really how to, you know, self manage ourself.
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Jason Mefford: A lot of times that that self management gets left off because we think, oh, we don’t really need that.
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Jason Mefford: Well you know what, I, I know a lot of executives and a lot of millionaires all over the world. And the one thing that I notice from those successful executives and successful millionaires.
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Jason Mefford: They spend a lot of time developing themselves okay and and this is this is more than just, you know, the technicals skills that we were talking about before. It’s around the soft skills and you know and and how to, you know, not only manage themselves.
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Jason Mefford: But be able to get the maximum potential out of themselves. And what that means. Usually, is that we have to do some things that we’re not used to doing.
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Jason Mefford: Because to manage yourself is probably one of the hardest things that we can learn throughout our life.
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Jason Mefford: It requires you know developing certain habits and doing certain things having that self integrity. So that we’re always doing and hacking the way
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Jason Mefford: That we believe that we need to be. And really, like I said, we have to balance all three of those areas.
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Jason Mefford: So again you know if if you’re coming in and you, you know, maybe don’t understand the rules of the game, you need to learn the rules.
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Jason Mefford: If you don’t really, if you’re not doing a good job of being able to balance you know stakeholder staff and self management.
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Jason Mefford: Well, you’re going to need to learn how to do that and how to actually focus on some of those other areas because, again, if you do one well but you don’t do the other ones. Very well. You’re never going to really be viewed or seen as a real executive, you know it’s it’s kind of like
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Jason Mefford: You know, part of the developing yourself if you consider I’ve used this analogy before you know junior varsity versus varsity sports.
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Jason Mefford: Well, if you’re not doing all of those things. You’re really playing at a junior varsity level when all the other executives in your organization are playing varsity
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Jason Mefford: So if you ever want to be able to play varsity ball with them and actually have their trust and respect.
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Jason Mefford: You have to develop yourself and start playing and acting like a varsity player. And again, a lot of that goes back to learning how to manage and lead stakeholders, you know, manage and lead your staff and manage and lead yourself.
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Jason Mefford: So those are those are some of the things that we need to be looking at and working on, because as I said, to begin with, you know, the, the reality that I see.
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Jason Mefford: Too often, which which really pains me is, you know, internal audit isn’t really given some of the resources or the budget that we feel like we need
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Jason Mefford: And one of those areas, I believe, is in this coaching and an executive program type of an area where others in the organization are receiving the help and we just kind of get left out.
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Jason Mefford: Now, I don’t think it’s all because the budgets not there. I think it’s because we’re not asking for it and we don’t realize how important it is
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Jason Mefford: You know, because most of us come from a pretty technical background, we tend to believe that if we are technically competent if we are technically strong
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Jason Mefford: That everything else will be okay. But it’s But life is about balance and you know if you’re really going to play the game. You have to learn how to balance. So again, back to our football analogy.
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Jason Mefford: If one team is really great at offense, but they don’t do very good at defense. They’re not considered a balanced team.
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Jason Mefford: If they only pass the ball and never run, they’re not a balanced team. The only way to really, you know, truly win and kind of go to the Super Bowl and win.
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Jason Mefford: Is you have to be balanced. You have to be good on offense as well as defense. You have to run the ball and you have to pass the ball.
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Jason Mefford: And if you don’t have that balance if you don’t develop that balance, it’s pretty hard to become a champion.
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Jason Mefford: And so again, that’s why I’m talking about some of these different areas so that you start to understand maybe you know where you have some weakness that you need to work on.
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Jason Mefford: That you need a little bit of help with because that’s the only way we’re going to get better.
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Jason Mefford: And if we don’t have that balance between you know how we deal with stakeholders staff and self and if we don’t have that balance between technical and soft skills.
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Jason Mefford: It’s going to be really hard for us to compete at the varsity level. So again, my friends, if you’re trying to play the game without help. It’s going to be hard.
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Jason Mefford: So how do you overcome that you actually get the help figure out what it is, think about some of these areas that I’ve talked about today.
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Jason Mefford: And where you can use the help and so that way you can actually start creating a development plan to be able to help you get to where you want to be.
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Jason Mefford: Now,
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Jason Mefford: To end one of those areas for chief audit executives is the chief audit executive forum. It’s a group of like minded chief audit executives from around the world.
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Jason Mefford: Where you can actually get and learn best practices, you can get some thought leadership from these people, but also it’s a way for you to be able to elevate the status of internal audit in your organization.
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Jason Mefford: You learn how to do some of these things that we’ve been talking about today. How do I manage stakeholders. How do I manage my staff and myself.
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Jason Mefford: How do I balance my technical and my soft skills. What are those soft skills that I need to develop to really move into that executive presence and really start to be perceived
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Jason Mefford: As a trusted advisor and gain the trust and respect of others in your organization. That’s why the chief executive forum exists, it is an executive program to be able to help
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Jason Mefford: Chief audit executives get that support that they need so they can actually play varsity ball with the other executives in the organization.
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Jason Mefford: So as I said, to begin at the at the beginning. If you’re serious about really trying to do those things, and you’re a chief audit executive
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Jason Mefford: Make sure and check out the link below go out, look at the information submit your application and book your interview so that we can see.
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Jason Mefford: In get that membership application to see if you can then be invited into the chief audit executive forum.
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Jason Mefford: So with that, my friends. Again, remember, don’t try to play the game alone. Get some help figure out where that is. Because again, as we move forward as we play this game and it is a long game of your career.
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Jason Mefford: Little steps along the way and making you better is going to get you to that point that you’ve always dreamed of being
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Jason Mefford: And by developing ourselves and doing better, you know, with ourselves with our staff with our stakeholders, we really can elevate the status of internal audit.
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Jason Mefford: In our organizations and be viewed as trusted advisors by the rest of the organization. So with that, I’m going to sign off for this week. But go out and keep on rockin in the audit world and I will talk to you next week on the next episode of jamming with Jason. Take care.
