2014 Gaming Conference Preview: Danny Goldberg on Crucial Communication Skills (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Welcome to the IAA's 2014 Gaming Conference Speaker Preview. My name is Shannon Steffi. Today, I'm interviewing Danny Goldberg, who will be one of our industry experts at the 2014 Gaming Conference taking place in Las Vegas, Nevada, April 14th through the 16th, 2014, at the Mirage Hotel and Casino. Danny will be presenting a session at the 2014 Gaming Conference called Crucial Communications, Tools When the Stakes are High, on Monday, April 14th at 10.15am. Danny is founder of GoldSRD, a staffing recruitment and development company. He is a well-known speaker and writer, working with IAA and ISACA chapters around the world and with numerous trade magazines. He is currently writing a new book to be published in June by Wiley called Communication, People-Centric Skills. Hi, Danny.

Speaker 2: How are you today?

Speaker 1: Good. How are you, Shannon? I'm doing well. Thank you. Can you provide us with a brief overview of your session?

Speaker 2: Well, I think what's exciting about this session for me is that we're doing it at the Gaming Conference, and anybody that's ever gambled knows how important it is to be able to read your opponents' facial expressions, your language of gestures, and their body language as well. We're going to cover that, not in depth, because we only have a short amount of time, but we're going to at least hit the highlights on how important it is to be able to read your audience, understand who your auditors or your auditees are, and really be able to establish a good relationship with somebody. What I found is nobody really likes the term audit. Nobody likes auditors per se. So what we've got to do is break down some of those barriers and those walls and develop a personal relationship with our auditees to be able to be effective.

Speaker 1: That's great. Thank you. Can you give us some examples of issues that can arise from an auditor's lack of communication?

Speaker 2: Well, I think it's as easy as not being able to get information from your auditee and them not being available for meetings. If you can't communicate effectively, if you can't ask for things the right way, you're never going to even get the opportunity to start the audit. So it's important, again, to get to know them on a personal level, alleviate that fear of the word audit, so we can run an efficient and effective audit. It's ironic because our focus in operational audits is efficiency and effectiveness, but without these people-centric skills, we can't even run an efficient and effective audit.

Speaker 1: Very true. Can you give us some key tips on how an auditor can become a great communicator?

Speaker 2: Well, I don't want to give away everything because I want everybody to attend the session. However, I think as an auditor, there's one key tip, and I think this is for life in general, is to listen, to be able to take a step back, not say anything, not interrupt the speaker, and just listen. Most people just want to be heard. And we only remember about 25 to 50 percent of the things that we hear. So if we're able to increase that just a small percentage, we're going to become much more effective auditors.

Speaker 1: Absolutely. Now, if there's one thing you want your attendees to take away from your session, what would it be?

Speaker 2: I want them to understand the importance of communication and interpersonal skills and how it affects the livelihood and effectiveness of the auditor. We're going to talk in general about conflict management, body language basics, gesture clusters, et cetera. And again, we're going to only cover a small tidbit of really what communication skills are. But without communication skills, the auditor cannot be effective. I will take an auditor that has great communication skills over a very technically savvy auditor any day because I think I can teach somebody to audit. It's much more difficult to teach someone to be likable.

Speaker 1: That's true. Thank you very much, Danny. We're looking forward to seeing you at the gaming conference.

Speaker 2: Thank you.

Speaker 3: Don't miss the IIA's 2014 Gaming Conference, the winning strategy for gaming audit professionals. For information on the 2014 Gaming Conference, visit www.theiia.org forward slash go to forward slash gaming2014.