In this #jammingwithjason #internalauditpodcast episode I speak with Danny Goldberg about some of the people centric skills each internal auditor must have. As a profession we often focus primarily on our technical skills, but soft skills is what will get you to the director or CAE level.
We discuss topics like: conflict resolution, body language, emotional intelligence, empathy, using appropriate mode of communication, etc… what may not seem like #internalaudit qualities, but things we have to develop to succeed in our career.
Danny Goldberg is the Founder of GoldSRD (www.goldsrd.com), a leading provider of Staff Augmentation, Executive Recruiting and Professional Development services. He is a well-known speaker on internal auditing and People-Centric Skills. Danny co-authored People-Centric Skills: Communication and Interpersonal Skills for Internal Auditors, via Wiley Publications.
This is the first book published specifically to address the wide-ranging topic of communication skills for internal auditors. It has been offered through the IIA and ISACA bookstores since July 2015. You can also find it on Amazon at: https://www.amazon.com/People-Centric-Skills-Interpersonal-Communication-Professionals/dp/1118850815/
A second edition of People-Centric Skills is due out in 2020. This is not an update, per se but can be thought of as a second book in a series. Listen to the episode and you’ll see what I mean. Contact Danny for a personalized copy of the new book when it’s released hot off the presses ([email protected]).
Transcript
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Jason Mefford: Welcome everybody to another episode of jammin with Jason. Hey, today I have my friend Danny Goldberg on with me and we are going to talk about a very non technical but soft skill that we all need hate
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Jason Mefford: It, it’s around having better people centric skills so Danny welcome on how you doing, man.
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Danny Goldberg: Jason, I’m fantastic. It’s great to great to join it.
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Jason Mefford: Well you know it’s you wrote this, this book people centric skills and I know it’s been out for a while. Right. I think it was 2014 or something like that, when it came out. Right.
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Jason Mefford: So, so maybe just just give everybody who’s listening. Just a little background on you and kind of why you wrote the book why you thought this was important and why this is something that internal auditors need so
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Danny Goldberg: Getting into training. Now we’ve been in training full time. We just had our 10 year anniversary last May and
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Danny Goldberg: Through the just that progression into the profession and up the corporate ladder to a chief audit executive
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Danny Goldberg: My main focus was always I want great you know technical skills are important, but I started realized as I climb the ladder.
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Danny Goldberg: The communication skills are so much more important than those technical skills because in many respects is auditors. We already have two strikes against us, or at least a strike against people just don’t like us.
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Danny Goldberg: On Facebook, we’ve got to. We got to make some extra effort to to build those relationships build those rapport build build the trust that’s necessary to be successful auditor. So we went the training ground. I was always interested in writing. I helped out on a
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Danny Goldberg: Best practices in Toronto book, probably about eight, nine years ago I was professional commentator on it and
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Danny Goldberg: Through that and kind of wood and writing articles I really loved the touches writing in general and I
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Danny Goldberg: Kept on looking on the market and Jason, you probably see this there is not much on the market on best practices on communication skills for internal auditors business finance professionals and
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Danny Goldberg: And so when we approached Wiley Manny Rosenfeld and I who has retired. But, you know, we still keep in touch. Great guy.
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Danny Goldberg: We approached them and they were ecstatic. They were like, Yeah, that’s a great idea. You can find topics like interviewing or very specific topics on communication.
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Danny Goldberg: Conflict resolution, but not just general. Here’s how to communicate well. And here’s some good topics to consider.
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Danny Goldberg: So we went that route. And it was the first books been very successful great reviews. We’ve sold and from what I understand, an inordinate amount of top copies compared to other
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Danny Goldberg: Internal Audit type books from what I’ve been told so we’ve done really well there. And over the last few years we’ve been talking to Wiley, because the book is
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Danny Goldberg: Fictional nature. It’s a storybook format with a character that’s an executive coach trainer that goes around the clients and deals with different situations.
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Danny Goldberg: It’s funny because I’ve been criticized in that regard, because the storyline is the main characters based on me. But people kind of a kind of a bit of an egomaniac
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Danny Goldberg: And what’s funny is man. He is the one that came up with that idea that was not my intention whatsoever. But he said, man.
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Danny Goldberg: You’ve got a built in Storyline here. I mean, you meet all kinds of people. You’re in differences scenarios different situations on a day to day basis.
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Danny Goldberg: Why not capture that and and he was right. It made for very easy writing and very easy storyline, so
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Danny Goldberg: Fictional book, very easy to read. I’ve been told you can read the whole book and about six hours it summarizes some of the key things to consider.
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Danny Goldberg: Any in the beginning and the end of each chapter and we want to carry forward. A lot of the same characters from the previous book to this book.
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Danny Goldberg: And this time around. Wiley thought it was a good time to to do that follow up. And so we just finished I finished writing it at the end of the year, December 31 and we’re hoping as the follow up is going to be
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Danny Goldberg: By April. That’s kind of the goal to be published, so we’ll see. We really haven’t gotten a given a publication date and we did carry forward the characters, but again, completely different skills, completely different storyline.
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Jason Mefford: Well, so this is one of those things to where it’s it’s not like you know a lot of times when a book comes out in a second edition. It’s pretty much everything’s the same and maybe there’s a chapter that’s different.
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Jason Mefford: This is like a completely different thing. Right, so you can go out, get the first edition right now read it.
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Jason Mefford: The second edition is almost going to be like reading a new novel, right, because there’s a lot of the same stuff, but it’s same characters, but it’s it’s it’s a completely different book.
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Danny Goldberg: It is exactly like reading a follow up novel and you know you compare it to, let’s say, a technical book like salyers which is a great book. But when they update that
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Danny Goldberg: They’re updating key aspects from an industry standpoint and things that have changed to our profession.
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Danny Goldberg: This book is entirely new entirely different topics. So yes, you can take that first book and you can read them independently, but you could carry forward the stories and the characters into North new storylines of the second edition.
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Jason Mefford: Okay. Well, I think that’s great because it’s it’s that sort of a book is is easier for people to kind of get through to right but you’re, you’re, you’re still teaching them.
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Jason Mefford: You know what needs to happen. It’s funny because, you know, you were saying about people. There’s, there’s always haters out there.
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Jason Mefford: Yes, you know, and unless you’ve written a book or created content you you
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Jason Mefford: In my opinion, don’t have a whole lot to stand on. Right. Because, because again, people are gonna say, Oh, you’re an egomaniac well you know what
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Jason Mefford: Every author that I know that is worth their salt all of their work is somewhat autobiographical because we write from our experience and and if there’s nothing wrong with that doesn’t make you a
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Jason Mefford: an egomaniac it means you’re just trying to share your story or share a story to be able to help people.
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Danny Goldberg: And honest about that you can make up most of these stores. There’s some of them are so
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Danny Goldberg: Lonely could experience, quite frankly,
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Jason Mefford: Yeah, some, a lot of times. Truth is stranger than fiction. Right.
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Jason Mefford: It sure is. Yeah, I know when I’ve when I’ve done you know a lot of training with people. I’ll give them hypothetical examples right but they’re not really
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Jason Mefford: They’re things I experienced, but it’s like you would you would never think you’d be like somebody really did that.
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Danny Goldberg: Oh, yeah.
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Jason Mefford: Somebody really did that.
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Danny Goldberg: Name and you know when Manny. Manny, actually, when we were first writing the first edition.
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Danny Goldberg: He was looking for a job and I talked to a few scenes and they said they were interested. The man is the one that said, you know, let’s, let’s do that. This is going to be fun. And he stuck with it and we both kind of brainstorm that you know we like the technical books, but
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Danny Goldberg: This is not a criticism of soils or any other technical book, but you don’t read those front page, the back page don’t read them cover to cover. You read
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Danny Goldberg: sections that are relevant to you take out what you need and and move on. We wanted a book that people can read relate to almost be empathetic at with and still get a lot out of. And I think we’ve been able to accomplish that.
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Jason Mefford: Well, yeah. And I think that’s where
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Jason Mefford: You know those kind of books actually can have a bigger transformation on people in the technical
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Jason Mefford: Yeah.
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Jason Mefford: You know, just like just like you said at the beginning, I mean, we both been in this industry for a long time.
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Jason Mefford: We’ve all we both lost a lot of hair over time. But it’s, it’s, you know, I’ve come to that same conclusion that you did is that
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Jason Mefford: You know, I think so much of the time. And so much of what is out there is technical in nature.
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Jason Mefford: And and it’s good to have the technical, but if you don’t have those soft skills, there comes a point in your career.
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Jason Mefford: And it’s usually around the manager level yes when it really becomes a disadvantage to you.
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Jason Mefford: And and i and I’m starting to use the analogy of, you know, it’s like you’re showing up and your other peers in the organization. They’ve been learning
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Jason Mefford: How to Be an executive they’ve been learning the communication skills, the persuasion, the influence. They’ve been taught that
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Jason Mefford: They have coaches, they have other people who are helping them. And so when you get to that point. And you’re trying to compete, if you will, to kind of use a sports analogy.
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Jason Mefford: With others in your organization who have these soft skills and you don’t, you’re going to get your butt kicked every time.
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Jason Mefford: And and until we as a profession really kind of wake up and start learning this, we’re always going to be playing in a disadvantage. We’re always going to be the underdog.
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Danny Goldberg: Yeah.
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Jason Mefford: And a lot of people in the profession feel that, oh, you know, nobody really respects me. Well, they don’t respect you, because you’re not performing
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Jason Mefford: At the level that you should be right. And it’s interesting too because what you brought up, you know, a lot of times when when when we say soft skills.
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Jason Mefford: People think communication report writing interviewing skills. That’s where they go to. And again, it’s, it’s, that’s part of it, but that’s not really kind of what we’re talking about.
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Danny Goldberg: Right, that’s so much so much more. And to your point on the manager levels. People get promoted for the wrong reasons people get promoted for their technical abilities but do they ask the question.
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Danny Goldberg: Can I lead. Can I get the best out of others. And that’s the question. So you know we dabble a lot in recruiting and that’s the kind of thing that we’re looking for, for managers and directors, yes. You’ve got to have the technical capabilities but
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Danny Goldberg: By the time you get to that level that I don’t wanna say becomes irrelevant. But it’s not as relevant as it is when you’re
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Danny Goldberg: When you’re when you’re coming up the ranks as director, I need those technical skills, but I need, I need so much more than that. And to your point, the profession as a whole. If you look at any survey.
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Danny Goldberg: From any of the industry experts, they all say critical thinking communication or soft skills. Number one, and to those that we look for. But they’re not recruited for a lot because
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Danny Goldberg: Well, I don’t know if I can answer that question right now because that doesn’t make sense because I I think those are the things you should be looking for. I can find the technical abilities.
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Danny Goldberg: But what makes you different. What makes you, how can you communicate those technical skills. That’s what
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Jason Mefford: Well, the further you get up in the organization. You know, I mean, I was a chief audit executive two times my day had nothing to do with the technical
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Jason Mefford: Right. It was about influencing. It was about, you know, trying to navigate whatever political landmines. The other executives were thrown my way
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Jason Mefford: It was you know about leading the team and doing other stuff. It wasn’t
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Jason Mefford: Even though I was very technical. I’ve got lots of certifications that didn’t help me in that role right because I wasn’t the one actually out doing the audits. I was doing everything else.
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Jason Mefford: And. And that’s why, like you said, you know, I think it’s it’s around the manager time when, if you’re not getting are learning some of these soft skills and starting to, you know, master them. It’s going to be hard for you get your career.
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Danny Goldberg: Yeah, I agree.
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Jason Mefford: I agree. And so, so let’s talk about, you know, because again you know people centric skills. What are some of the skills.
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Jason Mefford: That people you know in our profession need to start focusing more on what are some. What are some of these areas. And what are maybe kind of some quick things because this is, you know, we’ll try to give some tips. But this is a long term process so
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Jason Mefford: You’re not just going to listen to today’s podcast and magically, you know, you’re, you’re, you’re a jet I in soft skills. No, but but what can we get people to start getting them down that route.
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Danny Goldberg: So in the first book I think we covered a lot of I would say somewhat basic skills conflict resolution.
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Danny Goldberg: Teamwork, team building. We kind of touched on body language, a lot of things that we kind of touched on, but this book, I kind of wanted to do something a little more in depth or one of the skills that I like focusing on that.
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Danny Goldberg: I’ve continually tried to get better at on a daily basis and emotional intelligence is
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Danny Goldberg: Haha understanding really
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Danny Goldberg: Where, where drive and and what what are your hot buttons and how to push people and yourself.
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Danny Goldberg: In the right direction and keeping them away from the wrong direction and understanding self awareness and empathy. And again, the impact you have on people is significant without you really
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Danny Goldberg: Realizing it a lot of time. So we have a long discussion in the book along chapter on emotional intelligence, what it is, how to use it and how to become more effective at being emotionally intelligent
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Jason Mefford: Yeah, because that’s that’s that’s actually an area that’s kind of been a hot button for me too. And, and the reason is because with with a lot of things you know a lot of people are using the word emotional intelligence now.
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Jason Mefford: But a lot of people still don’t really understand what it is.
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Jason Mefford: And you know, when you when you go back and you actually look at the origins of it. The, the couple of scientific stuff that was that was written to begin with, you know, before we really got the book on emotional intelligence. Right.
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Jason Mefford: That, that, you know, it depends on who you’re talking to. There’s either four or five pillars.
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Jason Mefford: But three to four of them are about yourself.
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Jason Mefford: It’s about understanding your own emotions, being able to control your own emotions. It’s only the fifth one
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Jason Mefford: That’s actually about other people. Yeah right but but i think a lot of times people go into this almost thinking like emotional intelligence is some way to manipulate
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Jason Mefford: Or force people you know to do to do what you’re doing, or it’s like I want I want my boss to learn about emotional intelligence because he’s an asshole. And, you know,
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Jason Mefford: Kind of thing and it’s like
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Jason Mefford: Well, you’re kind of going about this the wrong way, guys.
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Danny Goldberg: You know, in specifically with emotional intelligence. A lot of that how you treat others and how you handle situations is
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Danny Goldberg: self driven, meaning if you don’t understand yourself. I always tell people if you don’t love yourself, how could you love another person. If you don’t understand yourself and
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Danny Goldberg: You have good self awareness and understand what drives you from an emotional standpoint, how can you understand and empathize with others. I don’t think you can. And this is why, to your point.
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Danny Goldberg: You got to get to know yourself better than you can even in order to lead people effectively. Yeah.
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Jason Mefford: Well, in the whole idea to realize to and
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Jason Mefford: And this is probably even harder for our profession than maybe some other areas, right, because if for example you get somebody who
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Jason Mefford: Goes into human resources. Well, they’re probably going to be more empathetic anyway because they’re, they’re kind of drawn to that profession that her they’re much more right brained and feeling kind of kind of a thing.
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Jason Mefford: The people that tend to gravitate to internal auto risk compliance very analytical left brain kind of people and and we we’d like to believe that will emotion, doesn’t really matter. It’s the data. It’s the
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Jason Mefford: It’s the facts that we see. It’s what we prove, but it’s like, but again, people don’t understand. And that’s why you know for 20 plus years I’ve been studying psychology
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Jason Mefford: 80% of what you do is all emotion 80% of all decisions that are made is emotion. It’s like, you know, because people get so frustrated. For example, when they, for example, create some sort of a
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Jason Mefford: You know ROI calculation or trying to prove a business case and they’ve got all these numbers and everything looks amazing. And look at this ROI and they go and present it to somebody and they get turned down.
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Jason Mefford: And they’re like, well, why was that the number, say we’re supposed to do it. And it’s like,
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Jason Mefford: That executive was not looking at the numbers when they made the system, folks. It was based on emotion and it was based on how well you were able to communicate it almost doesn’t matter what the numbers are.
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Danny Goldberg: That’s fair, that’s, that’s very fair and
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Danny Goldberg: To your point, man. Emotion drives a lot and it’s ironic because I you know I focus when I do my internal on classes on factually based conclusions at all times.
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Danny Goldberg: But the ironic thing is as an industry. We use a lot of emotional terms in in the reports that we write. And so I think that really
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Danny Goldberg: hinders good understanding good communication of finding one of my favorite words.
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Danny Goldberg: Actually one of my least favorite words is adequate versus inadequate, you know, you see those in audit reports all the time.
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Danny Goldberg: And inadequate isn’t awful, awful term that’s a very emotional term to say, even if you’re talking about. They’re inadequate control structure.
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Danny Goldberg: But what I think people don’t realize is people read this from a personal standpoint, I mean you’re talking about their process. If it’s one of your clients if you’re saying their processes and it is inadequate. The controls are inadequate, you’re saying they’re inadequate, I think.
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Jason Mefford: When I
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Danny Goldberg: Look around with people. I’m an inadequate father I’m inadequate, man, that’s a
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Danny Goldberg: That’s a horrible, horrible term, quite frankly, and it’s again, much worse than failure, but we throw it around willy nilly all the time because that’s kind of one of our industry terms that
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Danny Goldberg: To that point if you’re emotionally intelligent auditor, you’re not going to describe something in my opinion is inadequate. I like staying very simple. I like sticking with
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Danny Goldberg: In its simplest form when we’re talking about controls, controls based on internal audit testing controls did not mitigate the risk to an acceptable level a little more wordy but at least it’s saying what exactly what I wanted to say. And it can’t be misinterpreted.
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Jason Mefford: Well, it takes the emotional charge out of it, right, because again, like you said, if, if we were talking, you know, as to friends and and maybe let’s say you know I noticed you were doing something that you could improve upon
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Jason Mefford: Yeah, right. I mean, yeah, would, would I walk up to you and go, you know, Danny. You really are an inadequate father
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Jason Mefford: It’s like, No, dude, you know, maybe, you know, you could consider doing this, you know, with your kid instead. Right. I mean, we wouldn’t as human beings, say, some of these things to people that we know. So why are we saying I’m in the audit report.
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Danny Goldberg: Right there, man.
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Yeah, it’s
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Jason Mefford: Our fight Nord well and then it’s and then what’s funny, right, is that we’re, we’re so offended, right, that that that that manager would take offense to that.
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Danny Goldberg: Well,
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Jason Mefford: If you tell somebody. They’re inadequate.
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Jason Mefford: They’re going to take offense to it. Right. And if you don’t believe this will try it. Right. Go, go, go to your significant other and say, you know, honey. You’re inadequate and see how they respond
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Danny Goldberg: Well, and, you know, to that point to, you know, when we talk about this in class because this is honestly one of my hot button issues.
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Danny Goldberg: People will say, well, people understand the terms like yes people understand the term because they’ve heard it, they understand the context.
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Danny Goldberg: Take someone that’s not been audited. Take a new VP that’s coming into the organization and you say that to them, will the reaction be the same. And that’s what you’ve got to ask yourself why continue to do something that’s not good practice just because it’s been accepted. Yeah.
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Jason Mefford: Well, and it’s one of those things. It’s just carried over as a tradition and and there’s a lot of words that we use in our profession.
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Jason Mefford: Have a very distinct meaning for us, but to other people, they, they understand those words completely different.
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Jason Mefford: And so again, you know, we can we can go one of two ways. Right, we can educate people as to what the word really means. Or we can actually just use a word that most people are already comfortable with and quit using the stupid archaic words that we’re using.
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Danny Goldberg: That’s
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Jason Mefford: I think the latter’s, the better you
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Danny Goldberg: Know, and I talked about using big language to a lot of times, um, the, the term with pops in my head is penultimate
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Danny Goldberg: penultimate is one of those words where I know what it means 85% of people don’t. And the only reason I know is because I’ve seen it in print a couple times penultimate means second to is to find out the draft before the final
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Danny Goldberg: Should you ever use that in a report. No, because people won’t fully understand the use
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Danny Goldberg: Of words. And that’s exactly what we’re talking about. But from an emotional standpoint, use the simpler words where people can understand we’re not trying to confuse people were trying to make them understand. Yeah.
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Jason Mefford: Now I know you know some of the things that we that we talked a little bit about emotional intelligence. And obviously that is an area, you know that we need to get better at so
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Jason Mefford: Go buy a book, go take a training course do something but you know. Come on, folks. We got to get more emotionally intelligent but, you know, and some of the other ones. I mean, conflict resolution. Well, that, that makes sense, right, I mean we we realize that a lot of times
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Jason Mefford: We’re going to be put in a conflict type of a situation. We have to somehow negotiate or come to some sort of compromise. And so that kind of makes sense, right. But even still, I think that
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Jason Mefford: That that’s one that I think sometimes we get a little self righteous about
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Danny Goldberg: Yeah.
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Jason Mefford: In thinking that we can’t compromise or else we will no longer be independent or objective, and that self righteous. I’ll let you talk to that a little bit. Cuz I see you’re trying to
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Danny Goldberg: It again, we’ve been we haven’t talked much, but I know we have a lot of the same beliefs and
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Danny Goldberg: Conflict Resolution is that’s actually part of our first. But in this book. We go into making sure that you communicate in the right mode of communication to minimize conflict and minimize
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Danny Goldberg: Misunderstanding. But to your point on independence and objectivity. People throw that independence wander around a lot because quite frankly I think they don’t want to do something.
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Danny Goldberg: You know, they just they want to stay in their box and and we’ve got to be
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Danny Goldberg: We’ve got to be flexible. I was never too concerned. And again, it’s based on your industry, but when I was chief Otter, I was never concerned about my independence. I was going to concerned about
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Danny Goldberg: doing what’s right from an organizational and audit committee standpoint in object objective Lee. I mean, it’s not that we were going to purposely do something wrong was just
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Danny Goldberg: You know, if we need to impair our independence to help out on this project and then have to outsource the auditing, so be it. But that’s for what’s best for the company and
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Danny Goldberg: This is something and Jason. I don’t know if the focus on this, but I love talking about the definition of internal auditing because people forget that our goal is to help the organization achieve its objectives always
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Jason Mefford: That’s ending. DING
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Jason Mefford: DING DING DING
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Danny Goldberg: But
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Jason Mefford: We forget that.
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Danny Goldberg: 90% of auditors forget that question. You know, they don’t know the answer. They say value added and they use all this auditor terms, it’s like
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Danny Goldberg: No, we’re here to help them achieve their objectives, we might go about it a different way. But we’re not there to hinder their success and until you prove that to them, you’re gonna have a problem.
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Danny Goldberg: Oh, go ahead.
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Jason Mefford: Oh, I was gonna say, Yeah, but, but I know people get very concerned when we, when we talk like this. Right. So I was coaching a chief audit executive just this last week.
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Jason Mefford: And we were kind of talking about this, you know, and I was asking some questions about, well, do you really think that’s that’s the highest risk area in your company.
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Jason Mefford: And, and, you know, so we were talking about this whole idea again of kind of this independence and well in the point was well
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Jason Mefford: But if I do that, how is that going to show up in my QA or am I gonna pass my QA er. And I said, Well, I don’t know.
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Jason Mefford: But if you don’t, I think that would be a pretty easy discussion to have with your executives in your audit committee. Hey, I didn’t pass my QA are
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Jason Mefford: Because I i actually helped out and did something that was in the best interest of the company, instead of following the standards over here. I think they’re going to be pretty understanding of that.
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Jason Mefford: When you’re when you’ve, you’ve got that that right attitude of helping the company meet its objectives and doing what we need to do to help with that. Yeah, you know, and this isn’t going down like being unethical or any kind of stuff like that.
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Danny Goldberg: Well, but if you
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Jason Mefford: If you can’t dot the i’s cross the t’s on everything. It’s probably okay do what’s right for your company and everything else is going to work out.
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Danny Goldberg: Transparency and continuous communication. That’s what I hark upon our industry, all the time. I heard from every industry, but specifically this if I have an independence issue.
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Danny Goldberg: I’m going to be transparent about it. We’re going to make sure people know about it. We’re going to make sure the board the audit committee know that we’re doing this.
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Danny Goldberg: And they’re okay with that.
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Danny Goldberg: That everything to your point, it’s going to fall into place so hot right now.
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Jason Mefford: Because it was you know even even before the standard got changed to where now that she founded executive can have other responsibilities, it’s like okay 20 years ago I was risk officer and ethics and compliance person as well. Right.
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Danny Goldberg: Yeah.
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Jason Mefford: But my board knew that my executives knew that we talked about it and again they said we’d rather have you doing at
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Jason Mefford: Them not have it. Then we realize you can’t audit those areas. If we feel like we need to we’ll bring in somebody from the outside.
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Jason Mefford: It’s okay. This works for us. Yeah. So I would have been really silly at that point to stand up and go no audit committee, I don’t want to take on that additional role.
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Jason Mefford: That you think I should or, you know, when my co CEO says, Jason. You’re now our compliance officer as well to say, oh no, Rick, I cannot do that because
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Jason Mefford: That would be an independence issue, it’s like, Okay, well, let me just explain right transparency. This is what it means. Right. And so I’m not going to be auditing that particular area. It’s okay, I’m going to set up my my department. This way, and he’s like, cool. Let’s do it. Yeah, you know,
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Danny Goldberg: It would be short sighted from a company perspective, it would be short.
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Danny Goldberg: Career perspective as well so
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Danny Goldberg: We go into a lot of things on again conflict management, but really it’s making sure that you choose the right form of communication, because in today’s
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Danny Goldberg: Highly technologically savvy environment. People default to the wrong communication method quite a bit. And that actually causes the conflict, more than anything else. So we’ve got we’ve got a lot of dialogue on that specifically
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Danny Goldberg: I’ve got a chapter on influencing change throughout any business, how to effectively intuitive thing, not from a technical standpoint, but from a. How do you communicate effectively to to gain people’s trust and to again influence that decision making, which
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Danny Goldberg: To me is one of the key skills of internal audit and quite frankly any business professional, it is
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Danny Goldberg: We also go into coaching and mentoring because, again, from a leadership standpoint, you’ve got to be able to handle some of these difficult situations with your team and get the best out of them.
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Danny Goldberg: And and the last three or four chapters are all about. And to me, this is such a key skill presenting your
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Danny Goldberg: PowerPoint presentation whatever public speaking presenting and body and not just being able to read people’s body language, but understanding what body language.
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Danny Goldberg: What message you’re giving off to people. I am far from a body language expert, but over the last 10 years I picked up a lot and
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Danny Goldberg: I’m pretty comfortable that I can read most people, and if I can do it. And that’s kind of my pitch to most people, if I can do it, anybody else can do it just by picking up on little
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Danny Goldberg: Little cues that people get walking and looking at the full gesture cluster vs vs one piece of it and
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Danny Goldberg: Going back to public speaking and presentation skills as I don’t know if you felt like this. But when I first started doing this for a living.
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Danny Goldberg: I loved it. It was it was it was perfect for me. I loved doing it. A lot of people don’t feel that way.
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Danny Goldberg: And and but what people have to realize if you can’t get in front of an audience and really own the room on the audience and give a good confident clear message your career will be stymied by that period.
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Danny Goldberg: A little bit to get confident or good at it as
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Jason Mefford: Well, and then the problem is, you know,
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Jason Mefford: They do different surveys about you know what people are most scared of
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Jason Mefford: And it’s always been ironic because I’ve heard this. I mean, we’ve been in the speaking business for a long time.
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Jason Mefford: And so, you know, I’ve heard this from several of the oldies in the profession, you know, that have kind of mentored me along
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Jason Mefford: And it’s like, you know, people are more afraid of public speaking than they are afraid of death. Well, yes. And that’s, that’s kind of crazy, right, especially when again as you get to that manager director CEO level. Most of your day is going to be in kind of a speaking role.
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Jason Mefford: You have to get used to it. You have to, you have to learn how to do it and kind of the follow up on that, like you said, is it’s it’s not your PowerPoint.
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Jason Mefford: And it’s not even the words it’s it’s some of the words yeah and and how you string them together, obviously from a craft.
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Jason Mefford: But I remember to study I think UCLA did about communication and and their number came in that that the the actual verbal or what’s sad is only about seven to 10% of the
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Danny Goldberg: Message.
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Jason Mefford: At night 90% of what’s actually communicated is all verb is all non verbal communication. It’s the rapport that you build, it’s, it’s the way you’re standing. It’s the way you’re presenting your voice. It’s all of these other things.
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Jason Mefford: And if we’re going to be successful, we have to learn what those things are. Or else we’re going to get clobbered
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Jason Mefford: You know when you get up in front of people in it, it ends up being kind of like, I mean, we both attended lots of conferences and most of the people that are giving speeches.
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Jason Mefford: Are reading from the slides and it’s like a boring lecture kind of thing that is not what we’re talking about. That’s why you fall asleep in those sessions.
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Danny Goldberg: And you know what, that’s, that’s one of the reasons why it was pretty easy for me to break into this profession because, again, it feels natural. I think in our book I came across, what did it. What did I call it
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Danny Goldberg: There’s a movie. How to Lose a Guy in 10 days. It’s like a long time ago.
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Danny Goldberg: I said there’s an
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Danny Goldberg: Audience in two minutes and I had the the top 10 reasons why people lose an audience. Two minutes into your point standing behind the podium reading your slides.
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Danny Goldberg: Not having good voice inflection, not having a good time. These are these are things that are very easy to pick up on. But
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Danny Goldberg: People aren’t good at and and again just those little tweaks here and there, can make you at the very least.
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Danny Goldberg: A competent presenter. You don’t have to be a great world, you know, and I always tell people, be yourself if you’re an introvert. You can be a good introverted presenter.
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Danny Goldberg: Don’t start to be outgoing. Don’t try to tell a lot of jokes. When you’re not a funny person. It doesn’t feel natural you can do something. Well, and still be yourself.
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Danny Goldberg: And I think to me that’s a, that’s a key point that people need to realize, once they realize it. I think a lot of that fear, to a certain extent tends to go away because they have no confidence, they’ll be effective as a presenter because of their personality.
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Jason Mefford: Well, and for for anybody that might feel that way. I’ll let them in on a little secret to is, is some of the best speakers comedians actors in the world.
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Jason Mefford: People that you know you would look at you see their body of work and you think, wow, they’re killing it. There again, they’re introverts are you
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Jason Mefford: I am
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Danny Goldberg: Diamond Ii Ii lean, I am TJ and people always shocked by that.
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Jason Mefford: Outcome. I’m an I am TJ to
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Danny Goldberg: There you go. Yeah, I mean, exactly. I mean, I’m I’m barely leaning that way. But I always tell people it takes effort to to teach an eight hour course.
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Danny Goldberg: I mean, I’ve got to turn it on and then I shut it down at night and I I like being alone. You know, I like just it’s, it takes a lot of effort and for people that are natural extroverts
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Danny Goldberg: This is the personality that’s it’s non issue, but there’s someone like yourself. For me, it takes some effort. I love it but it’s it’s not easy to do.
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Jason Mefford: Yeah, so if you’re an introvert, don’t think you can’t do this because like I said, I mean, literally, you would be you’d be floored.
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Jason Mefford: We’ll find out who some of these people are in your life really there an introvert. Uh huh. Yeah, serious introvert. Okay.
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Jason Mefford: So I know in just like everything we get to talking and we kind of bump up on time already. So I think we’re gonna have we’re gonna have to talk again because it’s
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Jason Mefford: You know you and I are on so much of the same page in a lot of ways. And, you know, but I wanted to at least kind of get something out there for
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Jason Mefford: People to start thinking about, you know, go out, get Danny’s first book.
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Jason Mefford: You know, the second one is going to be coming out, you know, in a few months. So you can get the second one. But like you said, it’s kind of like reading
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Jason Mefford: You know, a series of novels. So you’re going to get something from both of them. It’s not just a repeat of the first book.
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Jason Mefford: You know, so make sure and go out and get that will try to leave a you know link to that in the show notes and i think i think before we got on. You said something to about that you’re going to be getting some hard copies of this new book, too, and
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Danny Goldberg: Yeah.
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Jason Mefford: Yeah, I will get an autographed copy directly from you.
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Danny Goldberg: Yeah, if, if you reach out to me. Specifically, I will devalue the copy of this book.
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Jason Mefford: By defacing it with your
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Danny Goldberg: I definitely be facing
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Danny Goldberg: I’d be happy to. I’d be happy to get one because I definitely appreciate the feedback. I’ve had a lot of people reach out to me after the fact.
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Danny Goldberg: And and give us very candid feedback. And I think what you’ll see in this book and what you saw on the first one. If you read it is you’re going to see
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Danny Goldberg: A real life picture and I would say a lot of emotion and people that know me can relate to a lot of these stories and people that don’t. I think you’ll it’ll open you up to some new potential
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Danny Goldberg: Things or yeah some new skills that you might want to focus on to to further your career.
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Jason Mefford: Well, this is probably good episode to the people may want to go back and listen to, again,
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Jason Mefford: Because like I said, we talked about a lot of stuff. I’ll try to give a little summarization, you know, but we talked about, you know, emotional intelligence understanding body language conflict resolution.
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Jason Mefford: You know, being careful about some of the terms that we use and the language that we’re actually using the mode of communication, which again, like you said, this is a huge issue. People
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Jason Mefford: You know, people send a text message or an email for something that should have been done in person and then wonder why they have this issue, right.
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Jason Mefford: You know, transparency, communication influence which I like to talk a lot about to because, again, I think.
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Jason Mefford: People don’t really understand and it’s been scientifically proven what the six different things are that you need to do are now seventh because Bob added the seventh one to it.
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Jason Mefford: Yeah, with pre suasion but there’s it’s scientifically proven what you need to do to be able to influence people. And then, you know, again, some stuff around public speaking. So
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Jason Mefford: You know for you to start just kind of thinking about what are some of these people centric soft skills that you need to start developing and just pick one and start getting help, go buy a book, go to a training, you know, do something so that you can start improving yourself.
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Danny Goldberg: And to that point, Jason, what I would say is I like your point, pick one and focus on it, do something, maybe even simpler.
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Danny Goldberg: Give a short two minute presentation and videotape it and and get some self awareness on on who you are and how you, how you come across in front of a group, a lot of people tell me
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Danny Goldberg: There’s not a lot of idea that every time I’ve done that and I am in front of groups all the time. Every time I see myself on camera I adjust something moving forward.
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Danny Goldberg: It is. It’s unnerving to see it’s kind of like hearing your voice on a voicemail. It’s you hate it.
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Danny Goldberg: It’s something that everybody should do every few years, quite frankly. And to me, that’s the simplest thing without spending much money you could do and and if you’re honest with yourself, you’ll see some things that that you’re going to want to change. Yeah.
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Jason Mefford: Well, and it’s easy now to with the technology. Most people have a camera on their phone on their laptop. Just turn it on and talk to yourself. Nobody else is going to see it.
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Jason Mefford: That, like you said, this is in. I know a lot of people try to Pooh, pooh it but you know again from all my mentors in public speaking and these are like, you know, heavy weight world class champions.
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Jason Mefford: Every one of them has told me to do the same thing, too. So, you know, just, just do it. Even though it feels a little weird.
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Jason Mefford: Because if you’re if you’re serious about wanting to improve, it’s going to take some time, you’re going to have to do some things. This is a long term process. But if you don’t start and at least start doing one thing you’re never going to get there.
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Danny Goldberg: So you can agree more, man.
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Jason Mefford: Well hey Danny, it was great having you on. Now, if people want to connect with you. Where’s the best place for them to actually connect with you at
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Danny Goldberg: You go to my website gold S as in SAM ours and Ricky D as in David calm gold. So the gold standard in training and you can email me at D Goldberg at gold S RD calm.
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Danny Goldberg: Or just go to LinkedIn and put in Danny Goldberg and I will pop up pretty quickly. I’d love to connect with anybody that could be interested in furthering their skills. Yeah.
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Jason Mefford: Well, and again, like I said, Thanks for coming on today and taking the time. And I’m sure we’re going to have some future episodes as well because we got to have you back, man.
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Jason Mefford: I would like
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Danny Goldberg: Oh my God, yeah.
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Jason Mefford: All right well with that everybody go out. Have a great rest of your day and start figuring out how you can improve your skills.
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Jason Mefford: In the soft skills areas and really it’ll have a huge, huge impact on your career. So with that, I’ll we’re going to sign off now and we’ll catch you on the next episode of jamming with Jason
