What Mentoring Business Analysts Taught Me About Leadership

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and may not reflect the perspectives of IIBA.

I wanted to grow as a senior business analyst at work. So I did what any good analyst does. I ran a gap analysis on myself and found that I needed mentorship experience. My peers and even ChatGPT (yes, I use it as a life coach, don't judge) had long been telling me this.

That’s why mentorship became my growth strategy in 2025.

This year, I took on five mentees: two junior analysts at work and three students at my alma mater, the University of Washington. The junior analysts were the real test. Fresh out of grad school with impressive technical backgrounds, they brought strong quantitative skills but were navigating their first corporate environment.

My challenge? Help them translate technical expertise into business impact and add analytical capability to the team while still delivering on my own work. No big deal, right?

Documentation Goes a Long Way

As I started onboarding these analysts with our team deliverables, my first lesson hit hard: without strong documentation practices, onboarding becomes a nightmare. I was explaining the same processes repeatedly, watching hours disappear.

So I pivoted. I started documenting everything and recording video walkthroughs. What took me 30 minutes to explain verbally became a five-minute video they could reference anytime.

If your company doesn't invest in documentation, you'll pay for it in endless onboarding cycles. But how do you work around company practices that lack great documentation? You create it yourself. Start at your own house first before scaling it up.

In this case, I'd been working in silos on my deliverables for at least a year, and now was the time to get documentation buttoned up. As I like to say, "help them help you by creating really robust documentation practices."

Let Mentees Think for Themselves

As I progressed on my mentorship journey, my mentees came to me consistently with tactical questions: “How do I do this?” “What's the formula?” “Which button do I click?"

I tried to resist the urge to just give them the answers. Instead, I'd say: "Give it a try first" or "I'm curious to know how you'd approach it."

Letting them struggle just enough to grow, but staying close enough to catch them before they failed, was actually the empathetic move here. I wanted them to come up with their solutions before I showed them mine.

And while it was far from easy to refrain from giving the solution when letting them find it was the harder option, I'm glad I did. It helped them become better critical thinkers. Often, they came back to me with approaches I hadn't even thought of, some of which became our new standard practices.

The Art of Delegation

Here's where I learned the hardest lesson about leadership. Leading a collaborative project without formal authority exposed gaps in how we all communicated expectations. We'd sometimes miss deadlines because I assumed context they didn't have, or they'd wait for direction when I expected them to take ownership.

As the project owner, I defaulted to just doing it myself. Faster, cleaner, done. But one day it hit me: If I keep doing the work, I'll never learn to manage people.

Again, I pivoted (hard). I increased our one-on-ones from weekly to daily, which created consistent touchpoints where questions could surface before becoming blockers. This practice helped us build clarity and trust.

I stopped avoiding difficult explanations and wrote detailed specification documents for easy handovers. I implemented rigorous quality checks and taught them how to analyze their own work.

Yes, it was slower. Yes, it was harder. But I had to remember that I was building my managerial skills, not just completing tasks.

The Constructive View on Pushback

The breakthrough moment came when one of our stakeholders casually asked us to add historical depth to a dashboard. My mentee immediately said yes and dove in.

I pulled her back: "Wait. Did we analyze whether this makes sense? What's the business value? How does this compare to other priorities?" She looked stunned. She had never questioned a stakeholder's request before.

We sat down and built an urgency versus importance matrix together. Within 10 minutes, we both realized the task didn't make sense. It would take two weeks for minimal impact. I coached her to go back to the stakeholders with questions.

The next week, she confidently pushed back on another low-priority request with a well-reasoned alternative approach. That's when I knew my mentorship approach was working.

The Humbling Truth About Fresh Perspectives

My proudest moment came with a healthy dose of humility. I had been spending 30 minutes wrestling with a Tableau table design, because I wanted row borders but no left borders. Those who have used Tableau know that it can be fickle sometimes, where things don't work as expected.

I tried every trick in the book. Nothing worked. Frustrated, I handed it off to one of my mentees. She solved it in three minutes.

Her fresh eyes saw what my experienced (and tired) brain simply couldn't. And that wasn't the only time.

Once, when I was overthinking a data model design, she suggested a simpler approach that cut our processing time in half. Whenever I got stuck in status quo thinking, my mentees would often ask "but why?" in ways that made me reconsider entire workflows.

That's when I truly understood a foundational truth: mentorship isn't about being the smartest person in the room. It's about creating space for others to be brilliant and (perhaps more importantly) being humble enough to learn from them.

What Mentorship Taught Me About Leadership

Mentorship is an ongoing journey. It helps you grow in your role while you help others grow with you. Mentorship taught me that future managers or mentors don't need all the answers. Often, they just need to ask better questions and help their team do the same.

They need to document, delegate, and trust. They need to resist the urge to do everything themselves, even when it's faster. As individual contributors, we’re often tempted to get the work done by doing it ourselves. But as we move up the career ladder, much of that work has to be delegated and managed.

Above all, though, I learned what truly motivates people: being seen, challenged, and trusted to grow.

I'm not a manager yet. But I'm well on my way to becoming one.

Whether you’re focused on team upskilling, fostering engagement, or driving professional development, IIBA’s Partner Program is here to help you build a lasting impact. Learn how. 

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