So You Think You Can Lead, Ten Self Reflection Questions for Leaders in ABA

Leadership within Applied Behavior Analysis often places significant emphasis on measurable outcomes: clinical progress, productivity, caseload growth, staff performance, and organizational expansion. However, effective leadership also requires behavior analysts to examine the contingencies they create for the people they supervise and the organizational cultures that emerge from their own behavior. As the presentation emphasizes, vision may be communicated, but culture is experienced—and leaders play an important role in establishing that culture. This interactive presentation uses ten self-reflection questions to examine leadership behavior across several critical domains. Participants will consider the difference between leadership based on positional authority and leadership developed through trust, results, professional development, and respect. They will examine staff investment and social validity, leadership blind spots, accountability for mistakes, responses to criticism, delegation and development of emerging leaders, professional reliability, sources of feedback, continued professional development, and the long-term impact of leadership behavior. The presentation integrates research and professional literature related to behavior-analytic supervision, burnout and turnover, social validity, psychological flexibility, professional development, and ethical conduct. Participants are challenged to move beyond simply asking whether they are achieving organizational outcomes and instead evaluate how those outcomes are being achieved and what their behavior teaches the people they supervise. The ultimate goal is to encourage intentional leadership practices that promote professional growth, integrity, compassion, clinical quality, and sustainable organizational culture. The closing section specifically challenges leaders to consider whether they built culture, developed people, and fostered clinical integrity—not simply whether they produced growth or clinical metrics.