For Behavior Analysts

Supervising Dynamically

Learn how to apply Acceptance and Commitment Training to management and supervision.
*Looking to enroll your team or organization? We offer discounts per seat for group enrollment, starting as low as two people. Please schedule a quick call or email info@sixflextraining and we'll get you set up. 

Overview

This series begins with an assertion: You already know how to be a great supervisor and leader. Here’s the problem. Knowing doesn’t matter. Knowing doesn’t change that you’re a human being and your performance is subject to all the laws and principles you’re expected to apply to others.

What you “ought to do” isn’t always the easy thing to do, and human beings, through millions of years of evolution, are designed to do the easy thing. This makes it hard to:

• Have difficult conversations that make a difference
• Deal effectively with uncooperative and upset supervisees
• Implement the practices that reduce burnout and resignation while promoting passionate engagement in one’s work

What To Expect

This course is less about “what to do” and more about identifying personal barriers to using what you already know through Acceptance and Commitment Training, a powerful set of practices for developing yourself as such a supervisor.

In this eight-session course, you will explore yourself as a supervisor and develop your supervision practices from within an ACT framework. Applying core ACT processes such as mindful awareness, diffusion, acceptance, and values, you’ll identify situations where you get thwarted in what you “know to do,” and learn to deal powerfully with challenging situations.

Even parts educational and experiential, you’ll learn the basic processes of ACT and then apply this coaching and training in to your supervision. The results are an expanded capacity for training and developing your supervisees in a way that experientially connects them to the difference they make and fosters their continued growth and development as behavioral practitioners.

In this course, you will deal with your own humanity, what thwarts you in your commitments, and develop practices for reframing situations you find challenging so that you can:

• Use performance management conversations as opportunities for growth – both for you and the people you supervise.
• Communicate in ways that inspires your supervisees, emphasizing the positive reinforcers of their work and the difference you and they are out to make.
• Be the supervisor you want to be. Not the one you feel stuck being.

February 2025 Meeting Dates and Times (All Times 8-10 pm ET/5-7 pm PT)
  • February 24
  • March 3, 10, 17, 24 & 31April 7 & 14
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Still not sure if this course is right for you?

The results are profound, but the work is challenging. This course isn’t for everyone. Feel free to book an exploratory call to assess your team's readiness. 

Here's what to expect

Logistics, Meeting Dates & Times

This course follows a cohort model with options for live or a-synchronous learning. Live meetings take place on zoom at dates and times listed below. During live meetings, there are opportunities to practice learned skills with other learners. Anyone who participates live will also have access to asynchronous content.

Asynchronous learning is delivered and tracked through content modules via our learning platform. Content is created for an asynchronous experience, with exercises specifically tailored for this platform.

Participants have the option to attend any combination of live and asynchronous but will only earn CE for one. You will have access to all materials for one year, however, must complete continuing education requirements within 6 months of the beginning of the cohort.

Course Syllabus

Session 1
Session 2
Session 3
Session 4
Session 5
Session 6
Session 7
Session 8

Introduction and Orientation

In this session learners orient to the course. We introduce some fundamental properties of the behavior of language, introduce and begin to apply ACT processes. Learners begin practicing the first fundamental communication skill: reading the feedback people give during communication exchanges.

Objectives:

  1. Participants will be able to explain how mindfulness and willingness relate to the behavioral principle of negative reinforcement.

  2. Participants will be able to explain how values relates to the behavioral principle of positive reinforcement.

  3. Participants will identify two things people do when they are heard and when they are not heard.

Accountability as Empowerment and The Performance Matrix

Here we begin exploring how we relate to accountability and begin applying ACT to move from a view of being accountable as “the right” or “good” way to be, and practice relating to it in terms of workability. This will serve as the basis for providing accountability as a source of freedom and empowerment.

We also introduce and begin to work with “The Matrix,” a tool for identifying what matters, the actions that will fulfill that, and the circumstances (including our own thoughts and feelings) that move us away from valued action and rob us of power and aliveness. Learners also practice key communication skills for evoking problem-solving in coaching interactions.

Objectives:

  1. Participants will identify some of the predictable outcomes of relating to promises in terms of “good”, “bad”, “right”, and “wrong”.

  2. Using the Matrix, participants will complete a self-assessment of one behavior controlled by avoidance and identify one values-consistent action.

Rules and Where They Fail

Here we deepen our work with the Matrix by and investigate the degree to which what we say about the world – our verbal behavior – influences our actions towards and experience of our clients, supervisees, superiors, and selves.

We focus on identifying ineffective rules, discovering how they impact our performance, and begin the practices of acting more flexibly towards what matters. Learners will also practice the next component skill of communication – evoking listener feedback.

Objectives:

  1. Participants will provide one example of a self-generated rule and describe how it influences avoidance responding as it relates to supervision.

2. Participants will practice evoking listener feedback and identify whether the listener is being heard or not.

The Self

In this session, we explore the fundamental nature of self and engage in powerful exercises to identify the content that makes up who we generally consider ourselves to be.

Learners will identify rigid behavioral patterns that emerge around this way of relating to self. Learners will also practice the next aspect of communication – identifying emotional behavior.

Objectives:

  1. Participants will explain self-as-content in behavioral terms.

  2. Participants will state relationships between their own self-concept behavior and their overt behavior, including situations they move toward and away from.

Turning Outward

We complete our conversation for having conversations for accountability. Then, having dealt sufficiently with what stops us as supervisors, we now turn toward implementing practices to empower others. Learners practice speaking in a values-consistent way as a means to open doors to communication. We also practice relating to others in terms of values and commitment.

Objectives:

  1. Participants will practice a conversation to restore a sense of self as being whole and complete.

  2. Participants will construct a statement that connects activity in the present to values and commitment.

Being an Environment for Employee Growth

Empowering others is learned behavior. It involves practicing the skills where people deal authentically with their own barriers to performance. In this session, learners put together all communication skills to practice evoking problem-solving behavior.

Objectives:

  1. Participants will define listening and identify its effects on speaker behavior.

  2. Participants will practice communicating such that a speaker has the experience of being fully heard.

Mastering Difficult Conversations

Here we cover performance management and coaching, where things are likely challenging to say and hear.  You will work with practices to apply everything you've learned to powerfully start a performance management conversation, to speak effectively and clearly so that feedback lands, and coach people so they create solutions that they will follow.  

Objectives:

  1. Participants will practice preparing for challenging conversations by engaging in awareness, acceptance, and values exercises.  .

  2. Participants will mock a coaching conversation where a participant a) identifies a performance breakdown, b) identified controllable elements that led to the it, and c) identifies behaviors and environmental changes that will support effective behavior change.  

Using the Matrix in Coaching and Moving Forward

Nothing in this course is a magic pill that will make you a great supervisor. What you learned were behaviors. With practice, you will get better. However, what will make practice take hold is an environment that supports you.

In this final session, we turn our eye toward creating relationships where these practices will be more natural. We also practice using the Matrix with others to elevate their performance.

Objectives:

  1. Participants will practice conversations to identify their own and others’ values.

  2. Participants will practice using the Matrix during supervision and coaching conversations.

Don't just take our word for it

I highly recommend this course to anyone who wants to improve their supervision and communication skills, and to anyone who wants to live a more authentic and fulfilling life. This course will change the way you think, feel, and act in your personal and professional roles. Thank you, Dr. Herbst, for creating and facilitating this amazing course!
Diana Powell, BCBA, LBA
Clinical Initiatives Manager – Learning and Performance Development

 About the Facilitator

Scott Herbst, Ph.D., BCBA got his doctorate at the University of Nevada, Reno where he studied Organizational Behavior Management (OBM), Relational Frame Theory (RFT), and Acceptance and Commitment Training.

Scott's ACT training beyond the classroom includes experiential workshops with Steven Hayes, Ph.D., and Kelly Wilson, Ph.D., two of the authors of the original ACT text. As a graduate student, he facilitated workshops targeting stigma and is a co-author of numerous ACT publications.

He has since designed and facilitated dozens of experiential ACT workshops that participants reliably report make a profound difference in areas of personal importance including relationships, career, leadership, family, and leisure.
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Supervising Dynamically

Learn how to apply Acceptance and Commitment Training to management and supervision.