Why Your Feedback Isn't Changing Behavior

Why Saying It Again Does Not Change Staff Behavior

If your feedback worked, the behavior would already look different. Instead you repeat yourself, soften the message, and wait for the next supervision meeting. The behavior you want to fix keeps getting reinforced (made stronger by what follows it). That happens in real time, while you wait.

Three lines show up again and again in this field. I already told them. It is part of their job description. I just gave them feedback last week. Saying a thing out loud feels like communication, but the two are not the same.

We are trained to analyze client behavior. We run the ABC sequence: what comes right before a behavior, and what comes right after. We look at the data, change the setup, and adjust the consequences. Then we supervise staff and drop all of it. We use one approach for everyone, and we talk at people instead of teaching them.

Feedback is a precise behavior change procedure. It is not a poster in the break room, and it is not advice over coffee. Some hires really are a bad fit, and this field is not for everyone. But most of the time the person is working just fine inside a broken system.

So really I encourage everybody on this call to stop asking what's wrong with them and start asking what's missing in my system.

From the talk — Kristen Daneker, BCBA

System Failure 1: Vague Expectations You Cannot Measure

Daneker calls the first one the fog of unmeasurable expectations. The feedback is not specific, observable, or countable. Be more positive. Your attitude was unhelpful. Those sound like feedback, but they leave the whole thing open to guessing. Be more positive to whom? Smile more? Give more praise to the client?

The fix is to say what you can see and count. You need to meet your deadlines is vague, because most staff carry many deadlines at once. Submit the report by Thursday at 5pm gives the person something they can actually do.

She tested two phrases on the room. Run the plan with fidelity (run it the way it is written). Offer choices when possible. The chat called both of them vague. How many choices? Two or seventeen? Does being done for the day count as one? Attendees offered strong fixes. One suggested a written rubric. Another suggested a teach back check. A third suggested IOA (two people scoring the same thing), so definitions stay steady across staff.

Jargon is part of the trap. Daneker said she once used the word fidelity, and a listener thought she meant something else entirely. Our field uses words that feel exact to us. They can land as noise for the person doing the work.

The good news is the fix for this particular system failure is to make feedback more observable and measurable.

From the talk — Kristen Daneker, BCBA

System Failure 2: The Reinforcement Vacuum

The second failure is a reinforcement vacuum. A behavior happens and nothing follows it. Over time that behavior drifts toward extinction (it fades out without reinforcement). We do this most often with behavior we label as expected.

They should come to work on time. They signed the handbook, so they know the dress code. I already pay them, so why reinforce any of that? Expected behavior still needs a contingency (an if then link to a result). Without one, it will not hold for long.

Natural consequences rush in to fill the gap, and they usually win. Say the session note is due today. If nothing happens when it lands today, and nothing happens when it lands next week, why hurry? Or picture a tech asked to finish a toileting routine. If skipping it avoids a long escalation in the bathroom, that relief will beat your feedback every single time.

We know that behavior goes where reinforcement flows.

From the talk — Kristen Daneker, BCBA

System Failure 3: Skill Deficit or Will Deficit

Failure three is misreading the root problem. Daneker uses a simple grid, with skill on one side and will on the other.

Low skill and high will is the eager person who needs more training. They want to run the protocol well, but they cannot yet do it across settings and across people. Train them. High skill and low will is the person who clearly can do it. They did it before, and now it slips when nobody is watching. That one calls for reinforcement and an environment change, not another training.

Low skill and low will is the box leaders love to blame. She says that is rarely the real story. High skill and high will are your strongest staff. They still need reinforcement, or that high level of work will not last.

There is a fast test. Stand next to the person and coach them through the task. If they still cannot do it, you have a skill deficit (they do not know how yet). If they can do it with you right there, you have a performance problem. We would never call a client a bad client. We would ask how to set that client up to win.

And there is an overemphasis on this will idea when a lot of times it is a skill deficit issue.

From the talk — Kristen Daneker, BCBA

System Failure 4: Broadcasting Instead of Using BST

Telling is only about 25 percent of the job. Her example comes from the operations side of the house. A team is asked to hand count client cancellations for two weeks. They compare the count to the EHR (the electronic record system). Then: go. You will get six spreadsheets and six readings of the same task, and none of it will add up cleanly.

Behavior Skills Training, or BST (explain, model, practice, then give feedback), closes that gap. Walk through the problem and the three columns that matter. Model it: here is where this number comes from, and here is the cell that does the math. Then let them try while you sit with them. Then rehearse and give feedback until they are competent. There is no set number of trials, just like with our clients.

Two things go wrong here. Teams call their training BST when steps are missing. Or they run all four steps the exact same way for every single person.

BST feels easy with concrete tasks like a tracker. It gets hard with open ended skills. You cannot train every version of pretend play. Teach the thinking, model a range of examples, and ask staff to rehearse a new variation each time. For a team of six, or for adult services with thin supervision time, she had suggestions. Try group supervision, or record a model of the steps.

And one of the key takeaways here is that we do have to have individualization for our staff.

From the talk — Kristen Daneker, BCBA

System Failure 5: No Follow Up, No Data, No Accountability

The last system failure is what she calls the ghosting of accountability. The feedback was clear. The expectation was fair. Then nobody went back to it. No one tracked the work, so nobody can say if the trend is going the right way.

Grounding follow up in data closes that loop, and it changes how the message lands. You are inconsistent feels like a personal attack. You completed 50% of the trials correctly is a fact on a page. One starts a fight. The other starts a plan.

Useful tools here include IOA checks, fidelity checklists, audit tools, and performance monitoring. Build in a self score so staff rate their own work first.

One attendee supervises a very large team and gives detailed written feedback on behavior plans. The same issues keep coming back. Daneker's answer was an audit tool the writer uses before they submit. They score themselves, fix what they catch, then send it in. Now the talk is about moving from 65% to 100%, not about red pen all over the report.

So data removes the ego, it removes some of the defensiveness.

From the talk — Kristen Daneker, BCBA

Feedback Delivery Failures: Timing, Avoidance, and Sugarcoating

Good systems still break at delivery, and timing comes first. Feedback works best close to the behavior, much like reinforcement does. Picture a tech teaching handwashing steps in the wrong order. One method teaches the first step first (a forward chain). The other teaches the last step first (a backward chain). If the tech uses the wrong one, speak up right away. Otherwise the errors repeat and the client gets confused.

Some feedback should wait. If that same tech rolls their eyes at a colleague, you do not handle it in front of the client. You ask for a few minutes after session. That is a delay, and a delay is fine. Same day and in private is the target.

Avoiding is not delaying. Avoiding feels kind, and it works like negative reinforcement (relief that makes the behavior repeat) for the supervisor. You skip the hard talk and your own discomfort drops. The staff member hears nothing, so the error rolls on. Two things can be true at once. Someone can be strong clinically and still need feedback about six call outs in a month.

Sugarcoating is avoidance in a nicer outfit. A staff member wears sandals to session. The supervisor says they love the sandals and suggests sneakers next time. The staff member hears the compliment, and the sandals come back. Kim Scott calls this ruinous empathy (caring so much that you avoid telling the truth) in her book Radical Candor. The same thing happens in writing, with softening emojis and a row of exclamation points.

We are not taco carts. We are going to have to deliver messages in a kind, clear, direct way that people aren't going to like.

From the talk — Kristen Daneker, BCBA

When Frustration Turns Your Feedback Into a Punisher

The final delivery failure is frustration. You were vague, you never reinforced, you never trained, and nothing changed. So the tone sharpens. Now your feedback works like a punisher (something that makes behavior drop).

Staff stop hearing the content and start reading your face. They avoid you. They stop asking for your input at all. That is where the flinch comes from when a supervisor asks, can I give you feedback? Nobody is born hating feedback. People learn it from weak systems and rough delivery.

She was direct about what this means for supervisors. Most of us were never taught any of this. Noticing the gap is step one. Changing your own behavior is step two.

Delivery can also be shaped for each person. She asks in interviews, and again at onboarding, how someone wants to receive feedback. Some people hate social praise (praise and attention given by others). For some, do you have a few minutes to touch base sets off a spiral. Naming the topic helps: wanted to circle back to the handwashing protocol. Treat your staff the way you treat clients: get to know them and build trust.

So sometimes it is you. Sometimes it is the system. Sometimes it's both.

From the talk — Kristen Daneker, BCBA