Articles
Why Are You REALLY Using the Sandwich Method for Feedback?
“You did a great job processing those reports, Jill! However, you still showed up 15 minutes late today, which is your third time this week and will get you written up. But I do appreciate you helping the new person with getting acclimated!” Have you received feedback like this? Have you given feedback like this? In my experience, sandwiching constructive feedback or criticism between two positive statements simply sets up employees to expect a negative feedback statement whenever their manager approaches them with something positive.
A Behavioral Safety Model for Clinical Settings: Coaching for Institutionalization
Decades of research in the field of behavior analysis has offered a framework to assess behavior–environment interactions across any population and setting that involves behavior. This foundation makes a behavior-analytic perspective of safety systems a vital area of applied behavior analysis and one that can have a tremendous impact on the tens of thousands of behavior analysts working in frontline and leadership positions in clinical settings. Given the important work being done by clinicians and the growing need for behavioral services worldwide, organizations should create systems that are measured by more than just outcomes. Systems should be built to support the safe and effective practices that lead to those outcomes. This article discusses a behavioral safety model applied to clinical systems and showcases the role of training and coaching in the institutionalization of this model.
Training Solutions are Evolving…With or Without Behavior Analysis
As the field of behavior analysis was evolving from fundamental theory and experimentation to advanced principles and widespread application, the training technologies at our disposal were also evolving. As we’ve moved from Teaching Machines to paper-based programmed instruction to PowerPoint presentations we have now entered a full-blown training and eLearning revolution. Training-delivery has become vibrant and exciting, programs are intuitive, and you can even take an entire training course from your phone while waiting in an airport. But with a $60 billion and rising eLearning industry at center stage in the world’s training purview, it is important for the behavior-analytic foundation behind learning and performance to keep a close proximity with training technologies.
The Ethics of Organizational Behavior Management
Organizational Behavior Management (OBM) is a sub-discipline of applied behavior analysis that focuses on organizational improvement and the performance of employees and leaders. OBM practitioners work to apply behavior analysis to help get results through teamwork, collaboration, high practice standards, and professionalism. There are a number of ways to get business results, but OBM aims to get results by supporting the most important asset in any system: the people. The purpose of this paper is to show the value of ethical standards to those practicing within the field of OBM, the current state of OBM regulation, and offer a call to action for OBM practitioners to maintain ethical standards.
Comments on the Ethics of Organizational Behavior Management
When invited to write a book chapter and subsequent Journal of Organizational Behavior Management (JOBM) article (Weatherly, 2021) on ethics and organizational behavior management (OBM), my goal was to simply disseminate the value of prioritizing ethics in OBM and offer resources for those interested. In response, JOBM published four commentaries based on my article focused primarily on why OBM practitioners should not be credentialed or licensed. This particular issue, to be clear, had very little to do with my article other than using the Behavior Analyst Certification Board’s® (BACB®) Professional and Ethical Compliance Code (Behavior Analyst Certification Board, 2019) as a frame of reference and noting how ethics fits in with regulation and licensure. In keeping with my original intent and based on the space offered for my rebuttal, I will briefly address a few points of clarification and information.
Improving Visual Inspection, Interrater Agreement, and Standardization with the Graphic Variability Quotient
Visual interpretation of slopes (or trend lines) is a source of poor interrater agreement (IRA) of graphed single-subject data. Difficulties with accurate or reliable slope interpretation may be overcome with newly discovered mathematic equations. Three experiments tested applications of the equations and demonstrated the following results: (1) manipulation of axis scaling (represented by a single numerical value called “GVQ”: Graphic Variability Quotient) strongly predicts the accuracy of behavior change (slope) ratings, β = .895, R2 = .801; (2) validation of a practical method for determining standard GVQ values was achieved (standardization is critical for reliable visual interpretation and comparison of data across graphs with uniquely constructed axes); and (3) a nonexpert group who received visual aids to rate slopes (degrees of a trend’s angle and a “slope change guide”) had significantly higher IRA (α = .956) than a control group that was using only predrawn trend lines, F(25, 27) = 3.11, p = .002, d = .49. The discussion explores how the results could become a basis for setting future standards in visual analysis that GVQ empirically and mathematically supports. Incorporating GVQ into graphic design and analysis can potentially improve IRA, improve measures of effect size that directly correspond with visual analysis, and facilitate between-study comparison of graphed single-subject data (in systematic reviews and meta-analyses).
The Agile Broker: Your Trusted Guide Through Agile Transformation
Are you feeling unsure about how to begin—or continue—your Agile journey? Many organizations want the benefits of Agile but might hit a run when looking to select the right partners or to structure teams and processes effectively. With the wrong hires or misaligned contractor relationships, Agile transformations can fall short of their potential. Perhaps it’s time to consider an Agile Broker.
The Integration of Applied Behavioral Science (ABS) and Human and Organizational Performance (HOP)
HOP is often presented in podcasts (e.g., Conklin, 2018), YouTube videos (e.g., SafetyVC, 2017), and social-media articles (e.g., Lawson, 2019) as in conflict with either a loosely defined idea of “traditional safety”, with behavior-based safety (BBS), or with applied behavioral science (ABS). The purpose of this article is to explore this discussion, so as to better understand the role of ABS in working with various organizational philosophies and strategies to better maximize our safety systems.
The Coaching Keystone to Your Leadership System
So you’ve invested in leadership development, trained each leader in best practices, set expectations, and perhaps even really took it to a new level and embedded coaching to help leaders break down barriers, transfer their new skills on the job, and build valued habits. But years later, why are your leadership practices inconsistent at best, ineffective at worst, and resulting in your re-investing in new leadership development initiatives?
The Use of a Treatment Package to Increase Timely Submission of State Regulated Medication Administration Documentation
Regulatory compliance guidelines within human service settings are designed to ensure health and safety of those served via a set of minimum standards of care. Due to the complexity of overseeing compliance, many supervisors report the task to be burdensome. The purpose of this study was to evaluate how performance management strategies can be embedded into current organizational systems to increase regulatory compliance related to the timely submission of medication administration documentation. During the study, each participant was asked to complete a short checklist based on their medication administration caseload, and attend a bi-weekly check-in meeting at which feedback was provided by their supervisor. Results of the study showed that the use of the checklist and feedback system was effective in increasing compliance among all participants. The results extend current literature related to the effectiveness of using in-house supervisors to implement performance management strategies.
An Analysis of Organizational Behavior Management Research in Terms of the Three-Contingency Model of Performance Management
The three-contingency model of performance management (Malott, 1992, 1993, 1999) was used to analyze interventions in the Journal of Organizational Behavior Management (JOBM) from the years 1990 through 2005 (Volume 11[1] –Volume 25[4]). The current article extends previous reviews (Malott, Shimamune, & Malott, 1992; Otto & Malott, 2004) by assessing how behavior analysts have applied this level of analysis in the description of interventions and the importance of this conceptual precision when describing maintaining variables. All 48 studies meeting criteria for inclusion in the current article involved indirect-acting contingencies with outcomes too delayed to reinforce the causal response. Only 17 of the 24 articles that described the performance-management contingencies described them correctly in terms of the maintaining behavioral mechanisms.