Writing a Personal Mission Statement as a BCBA (Without the Cringe)

By the end of this page you will have one sentence written down that is your personal mission as a BCBA, and you will know how to use it on Monday at your next intake. That is the whole point. Not a vision board. Not a paragraph on a website nobody reads. One sentence you can say out loud, that tells you what to do when the company script and the family in front of you do not agree.

Most BCBAs do not have one of these. That is not a moral failure. Nobody trained us to write one. Supervision hours focused on data, graphs, function-based assessment, and the BACB task list. Values got a slide near the end of the ethics module and then everyone moved on.

This page is the short version of a longer talk by Megh Crowley, a BCBA and clinical director who uses values as the working tool she pulls out at intake. The CEU itself is worth watching if you want the full version with the assessment tools, the social validity work, and the parent training piece. The page below is just the artifact: how to write the sentence, what makes it real, and how to know yours is working.

Why Most BCBA Mission Statements Read Like LinkedIn Bios#

Open the careers page of almost any ABA company. Find the mission statement. Read it out loud. It probably says something about helping each child reach their full potential through evidence-based, individualized care. You could swap that sentence between three different companies and nobody would notice.

That is the cringe version. It is not wrong. It is just not useful. A mission statement that you cannot fail to follow is not a mission statement. It is filler.

The reason most personal mission statements end up the same way is that BCBAs copy the structure of the company one. We learn to write the way our org writes. So when somebody asks us what we stand for, we reach for the same vocabulary: compassion, integrity, evidence-based, family-centered. Words that test well in a brochure.

Megh has a quieter starting point for people whose company does not even have a mission statement to copy from:

"Maybe there's not a mission statement. Maybe there's not a value statement. So a recommendation that I could make to be a change agent in your company is take a look at the language that's being used."

That is the move. Before you write the sentence, look at what is already there. Open your intake packet. Open the universal protocols. Open a treatment plan you wrote last month. Highlight the words that show up over and over. Those words are your real values, whether you picked them on purpose or not. If you do not like what you see, that is the gap your mission has to close.

The Two Halves of a Usable Mission#

A mission statement that earns its keep has to do two jobs at once. It has to say what you stand for. And it has to help you make a decision when two things you care about pull in opposite directions.

Megh borrows the working definition from a few places. The simplest one is that values are beliefs that act as guiding principles for your decisions. That is the part most people skip. They write the standing-for half (compassion, dignity, respect) and then never get to the decision half. So when Mom wants academics by Friday and you think the child needs three weeks of pairing first, the mission does not help. It sits on the wall.

The fuller version Megh pulls from the ACT literature is wider:

"What's significant and meaningful to you, and what you want to stand for in this life."

Combine the two. Your mission has to say what matters to you, and it has to tell you what to do when the matters bump into each other. If it cannot do the second part, it is a banner, not a mission.

The One-Sentence Template (and Why One Sentence Is the Cap)#

One sentence. Not a paragraph. Not three bullets. One sentence.

The cap matters because long mission statements are how you hide. The more clauses you add, the more outs you give yourself. A short sentence forces a real choice.

Here is a template that works. You do not have to use it. It is just a starting place if you are staring at a blank cursor:

I exist as a BCBA to [the thing you stand for], even when [the thing that usually wins instead].

The second half is the unlock. That is the conflict your mission has to resolve. Write the version of you that gets pulled off course on a Tuesday afternoon. Write what usually wins. Then put that into the sentence so the mission has something to push against.

Examples of the second half: even when the authorization is for academics. Even when the parent wants compliance first. Even when the data look good. Even when the company script says to start with the protocol. Even when I am tired.

The sentence is not supposed to be pretty. It is supposed to be load-bearing.

Three Real Examples (In-Home, School-Based, Clinical Director)#

In-home BCBA: I exist as a BCBA to make sure the kid in front of me has a voice in their own treatment, even when the parent is paying me to make problem behavior stop.

School-based BCBA: I exist as a BCBA to teach skills that work in the classroom this kid actually sits in, even when the IEP team wants a generic plan that fits the binder.

Clinical director: I exist as a BCBA to keep my staff from doing things they will be ashamed of in five years, even when the authorization clock says we are behind.

Notice none of these are pretty. Notice all three of them tell you what to do when something specific goes wrong. That is the test.

The Test: Read It Before Your Next Intake#

Here is the only test that counts. Read your sentence out loud the morning of your next intake. Then sit through the intake. Then ask yourself one question: did this sentence change anything I said, asked, or wrote down?

If yes, the sentence is doing its job. Keep it. Edit the wording later if you want.

If no, the sentence is decoration. Rewrite the second half. The second half is almost always what is broken. People write a stand-for clause that is real, then pair it with a generic "even when" that does not match the conflict they actually hit. Match the conflict that actually shows up in your week.

Megh is blunt about the failure mode:

"Your values are not just something you add in at the end to make treatment sound nice."

If your mission only changes the website and not the intake, you have written the cringe version. Try again.

What to Do If You Cannot Write One Yet#

A lot of BCBAs sit down to do this and nothing comes out. That is useful information, not a problem.

It usually means one of three things. One: you have never been given language for what you actually believe, and you need to read or watch a few people who have. Megh names a handful in the talk (Greg Hanley, Hillary Laney, Megan Miller, Brian Middleton, the PFA SBT community). Pick one, spend a week with their work, and try again.

Two: your job is asking you to do things you do not believe in, and writing the sentence forces you to look at that. The sentence will not come out because writing it honestly would cost you the job. That is real. The mission is still worth writing. You may just have to decide what to do with what it tells you.

Three: you have been doing this long enough that you have a mission, but it lives in your hands, not your mouth. You know what you do at intake. You do not have words for it yet. In that case, do not write the sentence. Watch yourself for a week. Note every time you broke from the script or made a call that surprised you. The sentence is hiding in those moments.

The reason this is worth an hour is the same reason a compass is worth carrying. Megh closes the talk with the image:

"You don't know where you're going to go if you don't know the direction that you're headed in."

That is the whole case. You can be a kind, careful, well-trained clinician and still drift, because every week a hundred small decisions pull you a degree off course. The sentence is the thing you read before the next intake to set the heading again.

FAQ#

Do BCBAs actually need a personal mission statement? Need is a strong word. You can practice without one. But a lot of BCBAs report the same thing: by year three or four, the small daily compromises start to stack up, and they cannot tell anymore whether they are practicing the way they want to or the way the company wants them to. A one-sentence mission is the cheapest way to keep that line visible. It takes an hour to write and you read it in ten seconds.

How long should my BCBA mission statement be? One sentence. The whole point of the cap is to force a real choice. Longer statements give you too many outs. If you find yourself adding a second sentence, you are probably hiding the conflict. Put the conflict into the "even when" clause of the one sentence and stop there.

How is a BCBA mission statement different from my company's mission? The company mission is about the business. It has to work across every clinician, every case, every insurance plan. So it gets generic on purpose. Your personal mission is the opposite. It only has to work for you, at your cases, in your week. It can be specific in ways the company one cannot. If your personal mission and your company mission say the same thing, one of them is not doing its job.

Write yours and watch the talk#

The fastest way to do this well is to write your draft sentence now, watch Megh's CEU, and then edit. Most people find that the talk changes the second half of their sentence, the "even when" clause, because Megh names conflicts they had not put into words yet. The full CEU is one hour, ethics-eligible, and free.

Watch the CEU on openceu.com