Ken Huey 0:00

Welcome to the Voice of Hope, where bold leaders and healers share how they're building hope, not just talking about it. I'm Dr. Ken Huey. Let's meet the changemakers transforming lives from the therapy room to the boardroom. Hello, and welcome to The Voice of Hope. Today's guest is Chelsea McAdams, Chief Operations Officer at Connections Behavior Planning and Intervention, a board certified analyst and leader in applied behavior analysis who has spent over a decade building high-impact programs that support students, families, and school systems. Chelsea, welcome.

Chelsea McAdams 0:36

Thanks, Ken. Nice to be here. I'm excited to have a chat with you today.

Ken Huey 0:39

Well, fantastic. I'm always fascinated to hear people's why. How did you land in this particular slice of the behavioral health universe? What led you to pursue this career?

Chelsea McAdams 0:51

Yeah, as I grew up in life, I always had this kind of question of just why do people do what they do? And I think as all of us probably know in the world, we kind of went towards psychology, thinking that we get a bachelor's in psychology and it's going to open up the world, which it doesn't. But after I had gotten my bachelor's, I was contemplating going into more of like neurology. But then I had a friend and a cousin of mine who were behavior technicians in different places of the world. And they were just telling me stories. And I was like, this sounds interesting. And so I went and applied to a place to become a behavior technician. And as I was going through the training, the science of applied behavior analysis just seemed very common sense to me. So I decided to go further and get my master's and start to go down that path. And then once I really got into the work of a BCBA, one of the things that I realized is the misunderstanding, I would say, around ABA. And I'm a person who likes to accept the big challenges in life. And so I started thinking to myself as I became a BCBA over the years, how do I promote ABA outside of the world of autism? What does it look like for individuals that have different diagnoses? And I really became very passionate for the emotional behavioral disorder population or EBD, which just kind of is a big umbrella for individuals that have diagnoses like ADHD, ODD, reactive attachment disorder. Doesn't mean that there's no autism involved, but just to try to understand how everybody behaves and why they behave the way they do. And I think the thing that really resonated most with me in life around ABA is how helpful the principles are to just everyday situations and realizing that all behavior is a type of communication, whether that is verbal or nonverbal, which has only helped me with my own relationships in life along with work and the individuals that I have the pleasure of being able to serve.

Ken Huey 3:03

You talked a little bit about kind of misunderstanding. Let me give you two parts here. So ABA or applied behavior analysis. What is that? Can you give us your elevator pitch on it? And second, what do people get wrong about it?

Chelsea McAdams 3:18

Yeah, totally. So ABA is still very much of like a mystical science, I think, out in the world to people. When people think about ABA or hear those terms, ABA or applied behavior analysis, they kind of go back in time, I would say, to think around when B.F. Skinner first started things and thinking about this type of a treatment in a laboratory world. What ABA really is at the heart of it is just using the principles of behaviorism in a positive way. So there's behavior modification that happened a long time ago in like the 60s and the 70s, and that also had our principles of behaviorism there. But as ABA came out into the field around the 80s, we're still a young field. The understanding of looking at things in a more positive outcome is where we started looking as ABA as a whole to say, oh, we don't need to utilize punishment to change behavior all the time. You can use positive strategies to do so. So ABA at the heart of it is really a type of science that can promote independence to the quality of life that the individual is looking at, not what society deems as quality of life. Everybody has their own individual kind of ways. And then in regards to your second part of the question, thinking around how is it that we can use ABA and also dispel those myths around it? At this particular time in our climate, it is challenging, just to be real. There are a lot of individuals who experienced having ABA done to them in the late 80s, early 90s, into the late 90s. And it was still pretty stiff and cold, I would say, because people were being very rigid to how the science goes. But the focus on autism is what made it really popular because prior to that, there were not a lot of effective treatments for individuals that had the diagnosis of autism. We can think back to the 60s and 70s and into the 80s when we started getting rid of these kind of institutions for people. But prior to ABA really coming out, individuals who had autism were kind of shunned away. And so once this effective treatment came out, people just paired the science with autism. But it's actually very supportive in many settings. Like even thinking around where we are today with artificial intelligence, behavioral principles are part of that. That is how it does its learning. And that's how you can see with individuals in the stories these days where they say, Oh, my AI chat bot is really supportive of me. It's like, yes, all they do is positive reinforcement, right? But it can be used in so many positive ways. It can be used with adults, it can be used in organizations, it can be used for policy writing and policy making. It really is just trying to get everybody else to understand what are the principles of behaviorism and the concepts and not just tying it to what autism is and that alone. Big time. Yeah. So I would say in the 2010s is when this branch off of ABA called organizational behavior management, OBM, started to kind of get a little bit of traction. So in 2018, I went and got a certification to become an OBM specialist. And the focus of OBM is taking principles of behaviorism in ABA and applying it to organizations to think of it in a way where we think about employee contracts. And in ABA, when you apply that, say to a client, you might call it a behavior contract. So here are the expectations, you meet these expectations, this is what you get from it. The other side of OBM that is really supportive for leaders along with organizations is understanding how culture plays a really big part in the organization and how behaviors will play a big role in that too. Far too often do we see people come to work and they don't get any attention from their boss until they do something wrong. Then they get that attention. I'm sure plenty of people in the world have had instances or experiences where they were very fed up with their job and then they go to resign, and that's when leadership wants to talk to them. That's when they want to talk about raises or they want to talk about performance or changes of their job. But if you're utilizing ABA and the OBM on a constant basis within the organization, not only is it going to help you with making more effective database decisions, because that's kind of what our world is around data, but you can also utilize these principles to ensure that not all of your employees are just having to wait until they do something wrong in order to get that attention or recognition that is needed at the time. By implementing organizational behavior management strategies, you can also ensure that there is a nice scalable fashion for your organization as well. In ABA companies, a lot of the times you'll see these kind of lack of stairways for individuals. So, such as like RBTs, all they can really do is what their credential allows them to do. And you don't need to have a bachelor's for that. You can have a high school diploma, get the training that you need, and then the reliance is on your BCBAs to further that growth in you in life. For BCBAs, there isn't a lot of growth as well. You have a role of a BCBA, and then typically your next jump is like you're a director. And so by understanding how to create this pathway for people within the organizations, helps with retention, helps with growth, helps with having more individuals bought in to the same mission of wanting to create a positive impact for all the clients that we serve. And when we're thinking around using something like reinforcement, we hear that a lot in organizations where it's like, oh, we're gonna have a pizza party and we're doing this because everybody did X, Y, Z. There are a lot of different types of reinforcers that can be out there. When we think around the functions of behavior, we talk about four specific functions, whether that is to obtain attention, obtain a tangible item or activity, maybe a sensory and or escape or avoidance of something out there. And so when thinking about the types of reinforcement that people can gain within their organizations, if leaders were able to broaden their mindset to say, I don't have to just do a pizza party, I don't have to just think about a raise. I can also think about the human themselves and what could really function as an effective reinforcer for these individuals as a whole in different types of capacities. So at the end of the day, I live and breathe ABA and I can't turn it off. And so when looking at situations as a leader, instead of looking at anything in a personal manner, it's really breaking it down in a behavioral objective way. So that way, as a leader, you can kind of remove some of that emotional side to make the best objective decisions for the organization as you move forward.

Ken Huey 11:20

Tell me, what are some common misconceptions people have about OBA?

Chelsea McAdams 11:27

Yeah, so people think that it is focused on punishment or that it's the other side of the spectrum that all we do is just give a cookie out to everybody doing something well. But at the heart of what ABA does is that it is a type of science that uses a natural environment in order to change people's behaviors. So there has been a misunderstanding out in the world over the last 10, 15 years that ABA is manipulation to individuals, but it really is not. What we look at as a BCBA is that we're manipulating the environment that individual is in. And I happen to be somebody and something within that environment. And the only person's behavior that any of us can control is our own. And so if I decide to change what my response looks like to whatever behavior you have given, that over time will change behavior. So it can be done in a contrived fashion or in a more naturalistic fashion. And I think if more people understood that our focus is not to change individuals' personalities, but instead to give them the tools to be able to navigate the world that we all live in, it would really help a lot of people out there to understand what our focus and our mission is, as opposed to thinking it's just to change what a person is.

Ken Huey 12:59

Chelsea, you have talked about building capacity in systems. Could you speak to that for a second?

Chelsea McAdams 13:06

Totally. So another area around ABA that I've taken in very near and dear to my heart is that there's this kind of mantra that I have for myself where no system should be reliant on one person. So just like how we are with our clients, we kind of have this motto where we're working ourselves out of a job. We shouldn't be here forever. What we need to focus on are the stakeholders around these people and build the skill set and the capacity in them. Same thing happens within the organizational side. Any system that is happening within an organization, if it's relying on one person and one person only, you're gonna have a pretty big pitfall at some point when that person gets sick or if they move on in life, which is okay. So a lot of the systems that I've built within our organization is really focused on making sure it's documented, it's communicated out, and it's within the same kind of thread as the other policies and or procedures throughout the organization. So it may seem like at times that there are a lot of hands in the pot, but everybody kind of has their own little piece in it. And anybody should be able to step in to be able to pick up those pieces as you go. That's one of the seven dimensions that we have in ABA. It's called technological. It an easy way to think about it is it's like a recipe. So if I were to give you a recipe can for an apple pie, hopefully you'd be able to read it and follow it. But if I missed out steps such as like preheat the oven, is it your fault that you didn't get that piece or is it the person who documented that recipe? And I think that's what happens a lot within organizations, is that if we don't have our processes written down, it is really challenging to scale any of your systems as you look towards the future. And if any new individuals come into those faults as well. And then that's where I see more often than not, leaders out there saying, oh, well, you know, somebody else didn't do this. That's why we didn't get to the, you know, the prize or whatever. But really at the end of the day, it takes the village, no matter what. I don't think it's one person out there that you can look at to say, oh, you are the one and only individual within an organization that is going to make it or break it at the end of the day.

Ken Huey 15:30

What gives you hope when you think about the future of applied behavior analysis and behavioral health in general?

Chelsea McAdams 15:36

Yeah, you know, I think one of the things that is hard during this time is that ABA and behavioral health is getting attacked from all sides. And I think part of that is due to not having the right education and information coming out. But I believe that the more of us kind of older VCBAs kind of get back out into the field, whether that's in universities or within organizations or public schools, I think that those areas eventually will be able to see what the type of support can be from ABA. On the other side of that, my excitement for the future honestly is around how ABA is going to probably permeate further throughout the world. I think it'll be a slower roll, but as we see more industries paying attention to behavioral health, I think there's going to be a bigger opportunity as we kind of look in the next five to 10 years around how ABA is going to be supportive through a lot of different types of industries out there. And not just via healthcare and children alone. It can kind of span anywhere because behavior is everywhere, no matter what.

Ken Huey 16:57

Yeah. Chelsea, you've been doing this for a while and you know what you're doing and explain very well ABA. Thank you for spending time with us taking out of your day at connections. I really appreciate it.

Chelsea McAdams 17:10

It's a wonderful field. You know, I obviously am biased to it, but I think one of the things that people will start to recognize as we continue through this kind of journey is how people are always wondering why individuals do what they do. And with ABA and behaviorism, it really gives you an objective lens to it so that you can start to help others without having to feel like you're forcing anybody to do it and that they have their own consent in it, along with being able to just better our own selves as well. One of the things that I like to talk about at professional development trainings a lot is how far too often in our media do we highlight the negative things. Those are the types of things that we all are very used to, but yet we don't see a lot of those positive contributions having as much traction. And yet, if we were to do that in our world, you could imagine how much of a flip on all of our heads that could look like. And that's one of those biggest things we call that differential reinforcement, to just say, oh, okay, I'm gonna give a higher affect and a higher praise to this individual who did a really great thing versus this individual who just did something that's really bad. But attention is attention to people, and it doesn't matter if it's good or bad if they're getting that need met at that time.

Ken Huey 18:39

Very good. Chelsea, thank you so much, and hope you have a fantastic rest of your day.

Chelsea McAdams 18:43

Thanks, Ken.

Ken Huey 18:45

Thank you. Thanks for joining us on The Voice of Hope. If you were inspired, share the light. And remember, hope's not just a feeling, it's a force. We'll see you next time.