Scaling Influence- Coaches

Coaching Is a Delivery Method, Not a New Discipline

Many BCBAs (board certified behavior analysts) believe coaching is off limits. Mellanie Page opened this talk by taking that belief apart. Her frame is simple. Coaching is a way to hand off what you know. It is not a new field. You already own the science. Coaching is a new route for getting it to people.

She named three beliefs that stop people cold. The first is that coaching is not allowed. The second is that you need a new degree or a special certificate. The third is that coaching jobs do not exist. Each one gets weaker the closer you look.

Coaching is allowed if you do your part. Work inside your competence, both in the coaching skill and in your topic. Use clear agreements so no one thinks they are buying treatment. Keep the line between treatment and teaching bright. On the job question, Page agrees with the skeptics. You will not find a job board full of BCBA coach roles at your current salary. That is the point. You build the role, and you learn to market it.

Her fourth answer is the one people skip. Start before you feel ready. Take a small step, get real data, and let the next question show up on its own.

certificates can be helpful, but they're not required to start coaching

From the talk — Mellanie Page

Where the Line Between Treatment and Coaching Sits

Page gave a clean split between two words we often blur. The science is one thing. Treatment is another. You can use the science without doing treatment. That gap is the whole basis for ethical coaching work.

Coaching, in her model, is structured and goal oriented support. It runs on education, reflection, and feedback. It targets skills, strategies, and decisions. It is not diagnosis. It is not therapy. Parent coaching is not your therapy plan in a new wrapper. It is your science, taught to a wider group of people.

She also gave a useful warning sign. Sometimes you have to get very narrow and detailed to solve one person's problem. That sign points toward treatment, not coaching. When you see it, stop and ask why the standard strategy is not working. It may also be the moment to refer out.

The science is the knowledge principles and methods for understanding and influencing behavior and treatment is a structured individualized service delivered to address a diagnosed need or clinically significant problem.

From the talk — Mellanie Page

Coaching as Dissemination Beyond Autism Services

Dissemination (sharing the science more widely) means making what you know usable by others. Page argues our field does this poorly outside of autism services. The strategies still travel. People without our credential already use them, teach them, and sell them.

She pointed to the book Atomic Habits as proof. It is behavior change work with the jargon stripped out. Readers get the science in plain words and apply it to daily life. You can do the same in health, in business, in schools, or at home.

Coaching counts as dissemination when three things are true. You teach a framework people can apply on their own. You drive change through education, not treatment. And you focus on skills that generalize (work across people and settings). Fixes built for one person point the other way.

Dissemination means that we are making specialized knowledge usable.

From the talk — Mellanie Page

Pick a Niche That Names the Problem You Solve

Page asked the room a blunt question. What does a behavior consultant solve? The answers came back vague. A behavior consultant consults on behavior. That is exactly the trap.

Opening a company called something plus behavioral consulting is not a plan. Buyers need to know the problem you fix. Is it for parents? Teachers? Business teams? Name the person and name the pain. Then check that you are competent to help them.

Her advice on choosing is to start where you already stand. Pick the setting you know best. Pick a topic you would be glad to talk about all day. You will end up talking about it constantly. The host added a second filter. Look for the skill you stack on top of your years in the field. What can you do that a peer with the same years cannot? That gap is your niche.

The chat filled with strong ideas. Health and fitness. Sleep. Feeding. Potty training. Executive function (planning, starting, and finishing tasks). Gerontology (work with older adults). Parent support. Even coaching for school sports teams. Page's point was that almost nobody is doing these yet.

That generic marketing will not get you clients.

From the talk — Mellanie Page

Four Checks on Your Scope of Competence

Page started with the ethics code's language on scope of competence (work you are trained for). That scope grows from education, training, supervised experience, credentials, and work history. She then broke it into four levels you can test yourself against.

Level one is foundational knowledge. Do you know the core ideas in your topic? Have you taken CEUs (continuing education credits) in it, read the research, or joined a journal club? The self check is short: could I teach the basics clearly?

Level two is guided practice with feedback. Have you tried the work, even once, with someone watching? A supervised case counts. A project counts. Level three is independent performance. You can run the work safely with nobody over your shoulder. Start with one client or one small group. The self check here has two parts: are my outcomes steady and explainable, and do I know when I am out of depth?

Level four is maintenance (keeping a skill over time) and growth. Competence is never finished. Keep learning, check in with a peer, and review your results. Look hardest at the clients who did not get results. Page closed by asking people to rate themselves from one to five. A three, she said, means you are ready to start at a small scope.

practice only within the scope of competence, which is education, training, supervised experience, credentials, and appropriate professional experience

From the talk — Mellanie Page

Start One-on-One, Then Build Structure

Page does not want you to quit your job first. Keep the paycheck. Use it to fund the skills you still need, like marketing. Take one or two clients on the side. Treat that first round as practice, not as a finished business.

One-on-one work is your test bench. The loop has four steps. Clarify the client's goal. Pick the structured strategy you will teach. Review what they actually tried between sessions. Then adjust. That loop gives you data on your own teaching. It also surfaces the barriers and pushback that never show up in a paper.

Once the same strategy works for several people, stop repeating yourself. Build it into a group, a workshop, or a course. That is the move from one to many. It is also where the time freedom comes from, so it only works after your results are steady.

But the goal is that you then create structure and structure creates leverage for you.

From the talk — Mellanie Page

The PRACTICE Framework, Letter by Letter

Page's build framework spells PRACTICE. P is patterns. Watch for the same questions and gaps showing up again and again. In schools it may be staff who need better classroom supports. In OBM (using behavior science at work) it may be a gap between what leaders expect and what staff do.

R is repeatable. Write down the moves you make every single time. In a school that might be a functional routine, a change to antecedents (what happens before a behavior), and a review of reinforcement (what makes a behavior repeat). Name those steps and you have the bones of a program. A is application first. Teach for immediate use. Have people try the strategy between sessions, then debrief what broke.

C is clinical to clear. Drop the jargon and use the words your client already uses. Instead of performance contingencies (rules linking a behavior to its result), say clear expectations, timely feedback, and praise. T is teaching one to many. One staff training beats twenty repeats of the same talk. I is instructional design (how you order and structure the teaching). Put the content in an order that builds. Understand behavior, then pick strategies, then track outcomes.

The last two letters close the loop. C is case informed. Use examples and non-examples (cases that show what does not fit). Show the small change you made, the objections you got, and the result. E is evaluate and refine. Find where learners get stuck, misread a step, or drop off. Then fix that part of the program and run it again.

Repetition in whatever field or area of interest you want to venture into signals, transferable expertise.

From the talk — Mellanie Page

Say Plainly What You Offer, and What You Do Not

If you advertise your credential next to non behavioral services, be transparent about it. Page pointed to standard wording you can place on a services page or sales page.

That line is not for every coach. If you are coaching on behavior change and using your credential honestly, you may not need it. It matters most when you move into a new industry where the lines could blur. Page added a market note too. Outside our bubble, many buyers do not care about the letters. Terms like behavior change expert often land better than the credential does.

Someone in the chat asked whether coaching is really just BST, meaning instruction, role play, feedback, and repeat. The answer from the room was clear. Many professions use that same loop. Using a tool with roots in behavior science does not mean you are practicing ABA (applied behavior analysis). Behavior is everywhere, so the label has to come from what you are actually selling.

Two guardrails hold the whole model up. First, written agreements that spell out what coaching is and is not, so consent is real. Second, a clear referral habit. When a person needs treatment, send them to treatment. Getting fluent at that call is part of your competence, not proof that you lack it.

these interventions are not behavioral in nature and are not covered by my BCBA certification

From the talk — Mellanie Page