Here we all are, in the midst of an unprecedented life event and trying our best to continue providing ABA services to the clients who need our help now more than ever.

So yeah, no pressure or anything. :-)


Prior to this pandemic, maybe you had some clinical telehealth experience, maybe you didn't, but either way I hope to provide either a review of information you already know, or a crash course in Telehealth 101. 

I suspect that for many of us even after the current crisis ends, telehealth could become the New Normal as far as the way we do our jobs. Don't you think? 
If so, then it's pretty important to get your skill set up to speed with using technology to serve consumers.


So take a breath, relax, and let's dive in to some strategies for implementing your ABA magic remotely!

You can listen to the audio presentation here.




* HUGE* resource file for this presentation: Click Here to Download
Sharing is caring, pass this resource along to your ABA colleagues! We're in this thing together.

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Tameika Meadows, BCBA, Blog Author

Today's quote of the day is from ..... Me!


See below for an excerpt about knowing your identity as a clinician, from my newest book, The Practical ABA Practitioner:

*Recommended Reading:

Runnin' on Empty

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Tameika Meadows, BCBA, Blog Author

If you haven't experienced it yet as a supervisor/Program Lead/BCBA, you will: Being in charge of those who want no one in charge of them.

Sounds like a riddle or something. But in real life, it's much less humorous.

As someone in a leadership position (regardless of your actual title), you probably imagined your job would include lots of mentoring, providing support and encouragement, staying available to your team, selflessly putting their needs before your own, and definitely.. absolutely.. NOT being like that one supervisor you had who was just the worst.
You probably imagined your team or supervisees would accept your teaching and support with gladness, gratitude, and a huge "Thank you so much, you're the best!".

So it can be a pretty big let down when instead your efforts are met with disdain, condescension, irritation, or just flat out insubordination.
When no one is implementing your behavior plan.
Or no one on the team ever replies to your emails.
Or your supervisee requests to work with a different BCBA.

Again, if you haven't experienced this yet, just give it time. It's darn near impossible to move into a position of leadership and never have to deal with difficult people. Actually, I would say the higher up in leadership you climb, the more opportunity you have to deal with difficult people.

So if I may, I'd like to offer some tips for this daunting challenge. Here is what I've found helpful in the past:

First, check yourself -

1.      Are you making a difficult situation worse by being overly offended, getting all wrapped up in your feelings, and assuming the person hates you just because they don’t listen to you? Guess what? When you are the boss, everyone won’t like you. There really is no way around that. Stop taking things so personally.

2.      Have you calmly and clearly communicated your expectations, specified the areas where they aren’t being met, and helped the difficult person create an action plan? No? Why not?

3.      Do you spend more time at work complaining about the difficult person, rather than talking to the difficult person? Come on, be honest.

4.      Have you lost your objectivity? Do you get tense, sigh heavily, and roll your eyes every time this person calls you or sends you an email? If so, then your irritation is likely coming through in your interactions with this person.

After you have honestly looked at your own behavior (do not skip that part, it’s really important), now it’s time to take a good look at your supervisee/employee -

1.      Is this an issue of poor fit? Sometimes you have to taste the food to know you don’t like it. Similarly, some people need to start working for the company, or hold the position, before realizing it isn’t for them. Have an open conversation with the difficult staff about their current contentment with their role/the company.

2.      Look at the reinforcement history: has this person had good supervision/leadership experiences before? How do you compare to their previous leaders? Are they simply not used to having high expectations placed on them? It's hard to follow when you've never been led.

3.      What career goals does this person have? One of the most effective ways I have found for dealing with difficult supervisees is to help them connect their personal career goals to their current work performance. For example, if you know the staff is pursuing their BCBA then help them connect the dots between being able to accept feedback now, and how much more challenging it will be to accept feedback you don’t agree with as a BCBA. These clinical “soft skills” only become more important the higher up you go in this field, so it’s important to learn professionalism and humility now.

4.      Lastly, are you dealing with a toxic employee? If so, then move straight to GO, and collect $200. 😊 Unfortunately, a toxic employee has the potential to bring so much harm to staff morale, client satisfaction, and work culture, that it may be a better decision for the sake of the whole team to part ways, and wish them the best of luck with their next employer.

** Helpful Resources:

“Quantifying Efficacy of Workplace Reinforcers: An Application of Behavioral Economic Demand to Evaluate Hypothetical Work Performance”,  Amy Henley et al (2016)

8 Things Leaders Do that Make Employees Quit

An OBM Approach to Employee Performance

6 Ways to Engineer Bad Performance

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Tameika Meadows, BCBA, Blog Author

"Bad bosses compel good employees to leave"
www.Forbes.com

"The way your employees feel is the way your customers will feel. And if your employees don't feel valued, neither will your customers"

Sybil F. Stershic

"The only thing worse than training your employees and having them leave not training them and having them stay"

Henry Ford

"Strive not to be a Success, but rather to be of Value"

Albert Einstein

"You don't get paid for the hour. You get paid for the value to bring to that hour"
Jim Rohn

Get Excited!

For those of you out there, laboring away, giving your all to your clients, working from 8am to 8pm every day (and getting paid for 1/2 that time), typing up 20 page reports at 2 am, laminating flashcards until your fingers are sore, putting hundreds of miles on your car, going to work bruised, discouraged, and exhausted, and eating your lunch in your car...I have something for YOU.

My newest book, 'The Practical ABA Practitioner', uncovers and openly discusses all aspects of ABA practitioner life, as in the good, the bad, & definitely the ugly. ;-)
This book is all about the practitioner experience working in this field, the day-to-day reality, how to plan out a successful career, and what common pitfalls to avoid. Especially for those of you brand new to the field, or newly certified.


If you want to work in this field, you need to read this book.
If you're tired of working in this field, you need to read this book.
If you LOVE working in this field, you need to read this book.

In preparing to write this book, I talked to lots and lots of practitioners about their experiences working in this field, reached back into my own early days as an in-home ABA therapist, and I also perused the resources out there about ABA as a career: What's it like being a BCBA? What are the pros and cons to becoming an RBT? What are the joys, the pressures, and the challenging to meet expectations of this industry?


Dying for some specific details about the book? Sure!
 "The Practical ABA Practitioner" addresses:

• Professional Burnout. Yup. I dedicated an entire chapter to discussing loving what you do, but hating the way you have to do it, and being eternally exhausted. You're welcome.
• The end of the book is a huge treasure trove of practical practitioner tips and resources (handouts, job performance tips, staff satisfaction surveys, suggested parent policies, etc.) that will help you do your job better. Seriously, its just pages and pages of stuff. :-)
• Work-Life balance as a busy full-time BCBA: Fiction or Reality?
• Developing and refining your clinical identity as an ABA practitioner.
• What are employers looking for when hiring RBT's? What about BCBA's?
• Should you pursue BCBA certification? Is it really for you?
• How to revitalize your passion for this field.
• What kinds of pitfalls should newbie BCBA's watch out for (because they're vulnerable to these issues)?
• Why are the staff retention rates in this field so terrible? To put it another way, why are so many ABA companies bleeding staff?
• Tips for choosing between various employment options, and red-flags to look out for.
• How to BE the change when working in less-than-ideal conditions.
• Holding this field accountable for the way we treat direct staff/ABA implementors.
• How to to develop your personal value system in this field, and practice with integrity.
• How to be truly successful as a practitioner, for years and years to come.
• What are some of the main reasons why quality practitioners walk away from this field, and don't look back. And how we can keep them from walking away.

Treat yourself, and do something GREAT for your career... get this resource and be encouraged and strengthened.

Click here to find this brand new resource on Amazon!

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Tameika Meadows, BCBA, Blog Author