In an article published here at Modern Analyst on the Top 10 Skills a New Business Analyst Should Shore Up On, #4 was identified as thickening your skin. You might be wondering what a thick skin has to do with being successful as a business analyst.
While analytical and problem solving skills are essential starting a career as a business analyst, they are not sufficient for excelling at the career long-term. Weaker business analysts avoid feedback, shy away from tense situations, and choose assignments that are well inside their comfort zone. They are afraid of failing so they play it safe.
More successful business analysts seek out feedback, face tense situations head-on, and actively pursue new challenges. While they don’t necessarily like to fail, they trust in their ability to bounce back so they choose the difficult over the simple.
It’s not uncommon for a successful business analyst to need to navigate any of the following situations, with grace:
- Ask a question only to hear silence. Worse yet, a particularly challenging stakeholder rolls their eyes and checks their phone.
- Present a well-groomed requirements document to stakeholders and receive critical remarks about the phrasing, feasibility, and/or rationality behind the requirements.
- Schedule a meeting only to have half the necessary attendees decline, not respond, or accept but then not show up.
While in many work environments these situations are the exception rather than the norm, it’s unlikely that you can skate through your business analyst career and not face them at some point. You need to be prepared for active and passive resistance, positive and negative feedback, and a little bit of friction.
Look back over the more tense situations you’ve faced in any aspect of your career. Do you own up to your mistakes? Accept feedback with openness? Accept new ideas that aren’t your own?
If you can’t answer these questions in a positive way, you do have some work to do as a business analyst, but all is not lost. As I wrote in How to Start a Business Analyst Career,
“Even if you do not currently have a thick skin, it can be cultivated over time. Being aware of your sensitivities and how they might impact your business analysis work is the first step toward working past them so that you can accept feedback more openly, objectively, and graciously.”
Let’s look at a few action steps you can take right away to work on thickening your skin.
#1 – Seek Out Feedback
If receiving negative feedback makes you anxious, openly seek it out. Start by asking someone with whom you already have a positive relationship with for constructive feedback about your work. Let them know that while you appreciate the positive comments they’ve given you in the past, you are truly seeking to improve and you’d like to hear their negative comments as well.
These questions may help you get to the kind of feedback you are looking for:
- Are there any situations you wished I had handled a little differently? How did my choices impact you?
- Do you feel our requirements process is as good as it could be? What parts frustrate you and why?
- If there was one area you think I could benefit from improving in, what would it be? How do you see that impacting my business analyst work?
As you receive answers to these questions, you may be tempted to look outside for an answer. Maybe that difficult situation wasn’t really your fault because your technical stakeholder took over your meeting. Maybe that part of the requirements process is outside of your control. It doesn’t matter. Receive the feedback openly. Thank them for bringing the issue to your attention. And own finding a successful solution.
It’s important to note that when receiving feedback it’s not necessary to come up with a positive solution right away. What’s more, being too quick to find a solution can make you appear defensive, which blocks more feedback in the future. Sometimes it’s best to receive the feedback, allow yourself independent time to digest it, and then present solution ideas.
#2 – Face a Tense Situation Head-On
When tense situations surface, it’s natural to seek a way around the problem. Rather than directly address a business case that doesn’t make sense, problematic stakeholder behavior, or lack of attendance at the meetings you facilitate, you might continue to press on as best as you can hoping that someone else deals with the real issue.
To excel in your role as a business analyst, you do need to learn to step into leadership roles and address the tough issues. This can mean having difficult conversations or, as appropriate, escalating issues.
- If a business case doesn’t make sense, approach the sponsor with your insights. Ask if there is anything that’s missing and offer to help them put together a more sensible business case.
- If there is a problematic stakeholder on your project, meet with them 1-1 to understand their perspective and voice your concerns. Be clear about how their behavior is impacting the project.
- If meeting attendance is an issue, first be sure you are clearly communicating the relationship between meetings and milestones. Then, as necessary, visibly stall project progress. You’ll receive some heat, but you may also save yourself from future credibility issues if you had attempted to move forward without the right stakeholders engaged.
#3 – Step Up to Challenges
When we fear receiving negative feedback, we tend to shy away from challenging projects, applying new skills, and working in new environments. It’s much safer to do the same type of work with the people we know and on the systems and processes we’re familiar with.
If you want to succeed as a business analyst, step out of your comfort zone and work on something new. It can be a new system, a new stakeholder, a new process, or a new organization. Your work should feel a little unnatural as you’ll be consciously putting yourself in an unfamiliar situation.
While you can make big leaps forward this way, you can also start small.
- Volunteer to serve on a new committee.
- Engage one new stakeholder on your project.
- Use one new business analysis technique, such as a visual model, in your work.
But eventually, you’ll want to take bigger steps.
- Take on a project that’s longer, bigger, or more complex.
- Work on processes and systems you are unfamiliar with.
- Perhaps even change jobs to work in a new organization.
Thickening up your skin is a necessary component of accelerating your business analyst career. Without a thick skin, you’ll stay in your safe zone. As you open yourself up to feedback, tense situations, and new challenges, you’ll expand the relevance and applicability of your experience while also making a bigger impact.
What’s more, once you recover from a few challenging moments (and you will recover), you’ll realize just how much the fears you had were holding you back and see how much more is possible in your career.