My guest today is Dr. John Austin. John is the CEO and founder of Reaching Results and author of a new book Results the Science-Based Approach to Better Productivity, profitability, and Safety. John's an internationally recognized coach to business leaders on safety and human performance. He and his teams of coach leaders in hundreds of companies across 19 countries, and he's published more than a hundred articles and three books on the topic now. Four books before founding Reaching Results, John was the professor of psychology for 15 years at Western Michigan University. John, welcome back to the pod.

Dr. John Austin: 1:05

thank you for having me. It's, uh, it's great to be back and great to have another conversation with you, man. Absolutely.

Jonathan: 1:10

It always is. We had so much fun about a year ago talking and now, dude, you have been a busy beaver. So let's jump into your book, like what inspired you to write this book results the science-based approach of better productivity, profitability, and safety. My man.

Dr. John Austin: 1:26

Oh man, that's a good question. I should start with the fact that I love obm. I mean, I was thinking back, about this, and you know, like when I was in grad school forever ago in the nineties, some of us who were interested in om. We got together and we literally read everything that existed. On the topic, like we read every single article, uh, research-wise, right? And like any books we could get our hands on, there weren't many books at that time, really. And so, that's one of the things that in some of my talks to ABA leaders lately, on the circuit I've been recommending to young people, man, like, people write to me, how do I learn about obm? I'm like, there's a lot to read. Just start reading, try to read it all. and so we'd just sit around and like late hours and geek out about any new studies that we found or how we could apply it here or there. the lab was just like anything that was around us, right? And so it was business, but it was also our research lab or the department or anything we could get our hands on. we were just kind of experimenting all the time with these things. and then I became a professor, at Western Michigan University, and I was the editor of the Journal of, organizational Behavior Management for years. And so even during that time, I think probably I read everything in the field up to 2010 or so when I really launched after being a professor. and I've become a little spotty since then. But the thing that I feel like, uh, characterizes a lot of the field is these articles tell you what to do, but not necessarily how to do it. It's almost like it's a recipe, like you're cooking and you know what all the ingredients are, but you don't know how much of each one, we know feedback works, but how do you deliver it? And like, what are the exact circumstances under which you deliver it and what are the exact words you say? Um, so you can read a literature review and find out the different situations and contexts in which it works, but making it work for you with one other person is a different story sometimes it seems like. So that's one of the, that's one of the kind of organizing principles to use one of your terms, uh, around like, why I wrote this book. I think this book, hopefully it's a step in that direction, like starting to talk about how we do this. The other one is that I've always wanted to democratize O B M, and what I mean by that is not everybody has access even to the science and the literature. And even if they do, they don't understand it because it's written in sciences, you know, it's not written really in English. And so, My thinking is, it doesn't have to be complicated. I feel like when you're writing a scholarly article, it's gonna be 30 or 40 pages, you know what I mean? And not everybody wants to read 30 or 40 pages on one little specific topic. that's why I created the Five Steps. I didn't create them. I mean, I created them. They're different than others, but they're based on all the other models that are out there that I read about as well, right? So, I didn't, you know, invent something when it came to that, but the idea was to make it really simple. at first when I was teaching at the university, it was make it so simple that undergrads with no business experience could do it. And like make a change in a business. never had a job, never been a manager, a leader. You follow these five steps, go into an organization, you can actually make a valuable improvement. And, and then as I started doing more and more applied work with leaders around the world, the challenge was how do you do this with leaders who have never heard of behavior, don't even know what behavior is, let alone ABA or OBM right? And so like those are like acid tests to me. can you make it simple enough for people to do it, you know? And so, uh, yeah, democratize O B M and help people understand how to do this, not just like what to do. I'm hoping that that's what the book does, you know, in its own way. And, uh, you know, we'll see. hopefully you get people, give it a read and, and let me know.

Jonathan: 5:22

you had me flashing back like 20 years to early in my career when I was a quote unquote management consultant. I'm like 21, 22 years old going into these like Fortune 500 companies and trying to give them feedback on stuff. And I had like no idea where I was coming from. I had like a few tools in my toolkit and some frameworks, in doing that kind of consulting work, it was very e it wasn't easy, but you know what I mean. Like we could deliver this wonderful PowerPoint presentation and tell them what they had to do. But then the hardest part is like, how do you take that and actually execute on it? And that's why I appreciate this litmus test that you describe of, make it simple and easy and accessible, democratizing it. But I just wanna help listeners understand, clearly you're passionate about ABA and you work in the ABA field, but you also work in a variety of other industries that have nothing to do with applied behavior analysis, right? Yeah,

Dr. John Austin: 6:14

yeah, for sure. Yeah. So I mean, from day one, when I went to grad school, I, I worked with John Bailey and so, one of the coolest things that I, I learned there was like behaviors everywhere, right? So he had lots of experiences to hook us into in the schools. Uh, doing a b a and working with parents and working with teachers and, students themselves, obviously, and, uh, developmental centers at that time and, stuff like that. but then, he also had connections with organizations that he helped me get into. And so I, I had a really wide variety of opportunities to do, like applied work. a lot of it wasn't ABA and it still is, but over the years I've just gotten more interested in helping people outside of ABA too. So, yeah, probably I've worked in 10 industries. I think, I don't know, I don't really keep count anymore, but it's, it's been at least 10. from manufacturing, construction to utilities and even aviation and, government and, lot, lots of others.

Jonathan: 7:14

there's clearly consequences, right? To, I don't know, like B C B A, not giving the best feedback, but that's totally different from when you're working in a manufacturing facility as you've done, right. And you're talking about not just psychological safety, but literal safety. Like lives are on the line. Right. And like livelihoods if you don't get this stuff right.

Dr. John Austin: 7:30

Yeah. And sometimes, you know, in those environments, your own physical safety is at risk if you give feedback poorly, like in a, in a threatening way, you know what I mean? Not like occupational safety, but that happens for sure.

Jonathan: 7:46

in my mind I'm an evangelist like you are for the power of our science and that it can truly impact all kinds of industries and all kinds of professions and all kinds of people, and that's a really neat thing. Well, I wanna dive in now and let's just, let's now spend the rest of this conversation actually, like breaking down. You've got five steps here that you've identified. first, tell us the five steps and then let's start with that first one and go deep.

Dr. John Austin: 8:12

Yeah. Awesome. just like to set the table a little bit, one of the reasons there are five steps and one of the reasons the book is written in the way that it is, it's got worksheets throughout the whole book, which, we can supply a link for you to get access to fillable worksheets and stuff like that, uh, as you go. But every chapter has a worksheet that builds on the next. The idea is to facilitate you in making a behavior change or improving a result in your organization. Like that's the whole idea of the book. I mean, a book alone, eh, it's not always the best behavioral technology for behavior change. Right. But it will get you started on that for sure. Um, so one of the things that, that I, I'm kind of a stickler on is that in ABA and outside of aba, just like probably the human race in general, the way we're acculturated, is that we have this illusion that asking or telling somebody to do something, we will get them to do it. We have this illusion that knowing the thing is enough, and then that'll change our behavior. Um, and so reading the book can walk you through the five steps, but if you really wanted to learn it, you would pick something and try to follow through the steps, like a workbook so I'm trying to deliver that added value because we all know in behavior analysis, when you stop and think about it, knowing isn't doing right. So the five steps to get back to your question, first one is pinpointing. And I didn't make this term up. I think Og Lindsley actually coined this term in Skinner's lab, like in the fifties. but the idea is defining the behavior in a way that makes it measurable. Aubrey Daniels and other people have talked about this, his book with John Bailey's a fantastic, like the bible of performance management. in fact it's called performance management. You wanna read that too. but pinpointing is just figuring out what you wanna focus on, what you'd like to see. One mistake that people make in pinpointing is picking, uh, picking stuff that annoys them. Not what they wanna see, but they what they don't wanna see. So we can come back to that. all right, so step one is pinpointing. That's figuring out what you wanna measure. step two is measuring. So that's getting some data on it, not just opinion, but some actual data and counting is better than anything else. Step three is agreeing on expectations. So once you've got a target and you've got some data, you can start talking to people about it and having a dialogue about what the expectation is in a clear way. step four is delivering feedback, and step five is recognizing improvement. So, I've coached, not just me, but the teams I've worked on and in classes and, and in groups of people. I've collectively been involved with, uh, coaching 10,000, probably more than 10,000 performance improvement projects using these five steps over the past 30 years. And, I'd say 90% or more, succeed. The ones that don't succeed are like people who don't follow all the steps. people fall down on the steps four and five feedback and recognition. and then the other ones are when they pick a problem that's just unsolvable or there's some major barrier they don't have control over. That happens sometimes too, but like, it's pretty rare. Like in most of the courses I teach, everyone in the course succeeds in making a behavior change and, and driving a better result by the end of three months.

Jonathan: 11:33

let's get to this start going, on pinpointing and, um, you know, I have been guilty of this error of picking things that I don't wanna see or like I get annoyed by, and I'm not a behavior analyst just to be clear, but like, when I'm trying to create a behavior change versus measuring the behavior you wanna see why is that so important when it comes to behavior change, in an o bm context and changing it at organizations?

Dr. John Austin: 11:59

I mean, I think anybody who's listening to this, who's an aba person or a behavior analyst, is gonna know immediately why, right? Like, because you can't, uh, I mean you can't reinforce, uh, non behavior, right? you can't change in non behavior. we do this exercise sometimes in my class, uh, cuz a lot of leaders who aren't behavior analysts have a hard time getting their hat around this. They just want all the problems to go away. Uh, people just do their job, you know? but that's not good enough because if you start to think about what, like if you say, I don't want you to complain, for instance, right? Like, stop complaining or stop showing up to work late, or something like that. in the showing up to work late, maybe it's a little more obvious, but complaining. It's not obvious what you want me to do instead. Right? So we can think about thousands of things that we're not doing right now. Uh, and it doesn't do us any good at all, right? they're, they're not happening, right? what you need to have is, Aubrey Daniels calls it an active pinpoint, and that just means it's a behavior that is occurring. So, you could say, I'd like you to complain less, but I think it's a lot more functional for you to say, I'd like you to do this positive thing instead. I'd like you to come to the meeting with some ideas about how we can improve and share them in a respectful way. I don't know, something like that. I'm just making something up there, but like, you got my point, right? So, you might have pinpoints like meeting deadlines. That's an active thing. that's a thing that's happening, or starting an ending on time or praising good work or delivering feedback at a ratio of four positives to one corrective. Element that gets, that's really specific, right? delivering reinforcement within 30 seconds of the target behavior. If you're doing ABA services or i b I services, whatever, um, I don't know. Those are some ideas. I don't do a lot of work in delivering higher quality services. I'm a behavior analyst and I, I delivered ABA services some, but that's not my expertise really. so when I teach courses, I encourage people who are experts at this to whatever it is, whether it's behavior analysis or manufacturing, they're experts. They know what results they want to achieve. I help them find the behaviors that are driving those results. So I don't need to know what they are. I just need to help bring it out of them and then help them like draft it up and pinpoint it in the proper way.

Jonathan: 14:29

That is so powerful. the ability to generalize these steps, right? To allow and work someone through a process where they can actively pinpoint. Certain processes or behavior changes, whatever it is that will lead to the results that they want. But you know, as you were talking about Dr. Aubrey Daniels, was he the person, John, that, that said, like, what was it, the dead person test? if a dead person can do it, then it's not a behavior or something, which like is exactly what came to mind as you're defining this. Are there any other cautionary notes or things that you'd encourage, someone who's trying to get the pinpointing stage right, that you'd encourage them to do? Yeah,

Dr. John Austin: 15:04

great question. Um, one of the things that happens sometimes is that people just pick what's around them right now without thinking about it very much. And so, you know, there are thousands of behaviors around you every day in the work environment, right? Some of them that catch your attention aren't necessarily the important ones. And by important, what I mean is they're gonna drive a key result. and it doesn't have to be a financial result in the organization. this book actually focuses more on relationships than financial results, um, at the end of the day. So it could be like a shorter term result, like bringing the team together, building trust, or, um, these are difficult to measure, but still important. developing a stronger relationship with people, having, higher behavioral integrity where people believe you're gonna do what you say you're gonna do, stuff like that. So what I encourage people to do and this is in the worksheets, in the book, is to, first think about the key results that your organization produces. Okay? So once you've got in touch with that, then start to think about your role and what are the key results in your role? what's expected of you to deliver? Once you've got some of those things, there are a whole series of other exercises to give you lots and lots more ideas. But like, let's just stop with those. Once you've got a clear handle on the business results that you need and your team or your results in your role, then you know, you pick one that you think you could improve or you'd like to improve. And then the next layer down is what are the like one to three critical behaviors that drive those results? And those are your pinpoints.

Jonathan: 16:41

I love that you focus on relationships as sort of a, a frame for this book because in all of the books that I've read and in my experience, you can do the best job possible setting goals and trying to execute to'em and trying to build a team. But if you don't have trust within your team and your organization, people can't rely on one another and they just don't trust one another to accomplish jobs, then like everything else is out the window. Right? Yeah,

Dr. John Austin: 17:13

yeah. Like try giving feedback to somebody who doesn't trust you. Good luck. I mean, you can, and I think that, you know, like some of us who are, you know, gray like me, learned in the days where it was like, well just give the feedback and be clear and it's on them to deal with, it's their stuff, whether they take it well or not, you know, and, uh, okay. To some extent that's true, but I really think that, you're not as effective as you could be if you follow that strategy. if you think about how do I be clear, but also respectful. And create the conditions where this person wants my feedback and wants to improve, then you've got some potential. You can really make a big difference. The

Jonathan: 17:57

the point at which they're actively asking you and they're hungry for feedback. That's a clear side. It seems like you're in a high trust environment. Let's go to step two because, um, oh gosh, the feedback part, we're gonna need to crush in a moment. Yeah. Step two, measuring what's important to get right here, John? Yeah,

Dr. John Austin: 18:12

so, I think the biggest, pitfalls that I see here mostly involve over complicating it. Um, especially among behavioral analysts, man, like people in my classes who are in ABA organizations, they all think we're gonna do a master's project in three months or something. And like some of them have, and some of them did. we've published a couple of papers showing the efficacy of this approach, with leaders and, in ABA organizations. And you can see the data and their actual grabs and they're like reversal designs in there and like all kinds of like multi-element designs and stuff like that. and my point here is that's not required at all. I think the best way to think about this is to make it as simple as it can be and not simpler and not more complex. Yeah, so I'll give you an example. I see people creating databases and pivot tables and like automated QR codes and tech that I don't even understand. when, in manufacturing it works just as well. When one of my leaders took, he wanted to deliver more praise. So he put eight quarters in his right pocket in the morning, and then every time he delivered praise, he moved a quarter to the left pocket. And then at the end of the day he counted the left pocket quarters and that's the number of praises that he gave out, you know? Right. So you just have to know if it's getting better or worse. That's all the measurement is required,

Jonathan: 19:34

oh, and you know, there's this like, um, Japanese, I think six Sigma manufacturing concept called Kanban. And I'm not gonna get this exactly right, but as I understand it, back in like the fifties and sixties, as, as the Japanese were trying to figure out how do you get more efficient, how do you get safer? How do you make the production line. Run faster. they developed the Kanban system, which we hear now in the context of project management and, you know, um, checking code in and out and like prioritizing different things. It's like, it, it's a little complicated, but in its original form, it was like at the end of the day when you're done with your tool, a hammer and you went to hang it up. It had to be as simple as they would draw an outline of a hammer on the wall and you literally would just stick the hammer boom and hang it there. Or the pickax or the shove or whatever it was. Like that's the level of simplicity. Not that we are simple minded as human being. Well, I mean, I'm simple minded, but, but my point is when there is so much that we're trying to like solve for in our heads, don't we have to make as leaders just make those kinds of decisions more automatic? And I think that comes back to your point of measuring is make it easy to do. Right? Yeah. Man,

Dr. John Austin: 20:40

what a great example. I had so many projects in manufacturing, on the shop floor of frontline supervisors trying to get people to put their tools away on the tool boards that were marked exactly like you're describing. So it becomes visible, you know, I'm looking at my wall. Like it becomes visible when the tool is missing because the outline is there. Right. And I think that's a fantastic example of what behavioral approaches can do. What we're here to do, I think, is to provide environmental support. At the point of performance, like when it matters, when, not like five months before or whatever, but like when the person is doing the job, is there an open slot for the hammer, so to speak? You know, the more we can think about it that way, man, there's a lot to learn from lean for sure.

Jonathan: 21:28

when I learned the brilliance of a task analysis like 10 years ago when I got into the field, I went so freaking crazy, John. I would write these five page procedures and I was like, yes, I'm, you know, I had such fomo not being a behavior analyst and I would produce these and it wouldn't create the desire change. And I was like, wait, what's going on? And you know what finally made me realize it, it's when I would download a new app from the app store. And it would be three simple visual instructions, and I would swipe, and then I knew how to use the app, and my eyes opened up. At that point, I was like, oh my gosh, people don't have time to read these long checklists. Put it at the point in their environment. Where they need that support. Ah, what you just said. Totally hammered that.

Dr. John Austin: 22:07

Yeah, man. The point of performance, um, I stole that from, uh, I think it's Russell Barkley, who's the A D H D, expert on like behavioral approaches. anyway, he talks about that all the time for kids with a D H D if they struggle with a task, make it visible. But I think we're doing the same thing. It is just the stuff we're making visible is different. so, your task list brings me to my next point. one of the first applications I saw when I was an undergrad of OBM was, my mentor at the time, Chris Anderson, published a whole series of papers in early J O B M in, in the eighties. some of them were focused on hotel cleaning and the way that they did it was, they created checklists for cleaning a hotel room, and it was like, I don't know, 500 items or something like that on the checklist. Right. And then they trained all the staff on the 500 items and then they had the supervisor come through and check it and give feedback on it and okay, that's great. And blew my mind for sure. But somebody in my last class just wanted to do a cleaning project and they just took pictures and like, that was easy and you can totally see and okay, you can't graph it. But the purpose of measurement is not to have a sexy graph, even though we all love a really nice looking graph. Right. Um, the purpose is to tell you if you're getting better. Worse or staying the same. And that's the need it meets, it needs to fill, right? So I think that's the main watch out for measurement. we usually make it too complex and too scary, and then it, drives people away. So step three is agreeing on expectations. So we got pinpoint, there's something really clearly defined that you wanna see happen. You're getting some data on it. And by the way, a lot of times, you know, this is a self-correcting procedure because you try to measure this pinpoint you've got in mind and you can't, and you're like, oh, I need to make it more specific. Or you start to measure it and you're like, oh, this actually isn't a problem. It's, it's a hundred percent all the time. I thought it was a problem, but it's not. So you go back to the start, and you find something new. and then you try to measure that in an equally simple way. And then once you get to the step three, you know that there's an opportunity for improving and it's very clearly defined, and you've already got some baseline data, so you kind of know what it looks like. this is relevant if you're dealing with other people and you're trying to get some behavior change in your team or your organization or whatever, right? And so agreeing on expectations is one of the things that leaders do most poorly. And there are a couple of Harvard Business Review articles on this topic, one was in the nineties, early nineties, and then the same guy came back and wrote one 20 years later in like 2010 or 11, saying like, no, we haven't gotten any better. You know, so for the last, I don't know, 30 years, one of the top items that leaders have a hard time with is setting clear expectations. I think one of the reasons is that people don't understand how to pinpoint very well, you know, and there's some fear too, right? So some leaders fear that if I pinpoint, I'm micromanaging and then I'm telling everybody exactly what to do and I don't have time for that. I hired them for the job. They need to figure it out. Um, okay, there's some validity to that. There's some truth to it. Others feel like, I don't know. I'm a visionary man. Like, you gotta figure out how to execute. That's not my job. My job is to have the vision and I'm gonna like draw it on a chalkboard, and then you gotta interpret it and make it into real life, you know, or whatever. All right, that's fine, but it's gonna get there quicker if you can articulate some of the behaviors. I also see leaders who change expectations a lot because business changes, you know, things change very rapidly in business. And so then they're dishing out new expectations all the time to their, team. And that gives people whiplash. They never get a chance to get good at anything if they're changing every two weeks. and then the last thing I think I've already said, but I just want to reemphasize it. I think a lot of these come from not having good practice at izing things or pinpointing things, operationalizing things. So I think those are the challenges that we face a lot with expectations. and so what I've done is over the years, and this is really a, it's like a product of all the learning that I've been challenged so many times in the last 30 years to help people understand it or what you're saying doesn't work, Austin or whatever, that I just, I've gone back to the literature and the research to find ways that are effective in dealing with this. So I came up with kind of a three step process that's based on a ton of different research areas and stuff. So do you want me to walk through that?

Jonathan: 26:50

Absolutely. Let's do it.

Dr. John Austin: 26:51

All right. so the first one is to define the pinpoint or pinpoints that you've identified. You've already done that, so that's really easy. But like, the idea here is that you're gonna get together in a meeting, in a group of people or one-on-one, that depends a lot on the context. We don't have time to go into that right now, but I talk a little bit about it in the book, but you wanna set the occasion for, delivering these expectations. Right? so you want to talk about what it is you'd like to see more of and why you think it's important. So, you know, it's important to submit your case notes within 24 hours of a session because we can't submit, for insurance payment or whatever, until those are completed. And if we can't submit for payment, then we don't get any cash. To run the organization to pay your paycheck, right? It's a real problem. I'm just making that up. It might not be true for many or any, but like, that's just, you know, one example, right? So I've defined it really clearly, and I've also explained why it's important. I'm not just making this up. there's a real reason. I call this agreeing on expectations, not setting or dictating or, you know, pushing, uh, for a reason, right? Because I thank it's best if we have a dialogue and not everybody wants a dialogue, right? Like, I have some clients they would say, you know, a leader I was talking to last week said some of my team are just old school and they just wanna be told what to do, man. They don't want a dialogue. They just want you to give'em the list and they'll go do it. And I'm like, okay, fine. This doesn't do any harm. Then. Like if you ask them their opinion, If they don't have one, okay, that's that's fine. You know where they stand, right? But so the second step is to ask them what they think and to ask them, you know, Hey, so once you've understood what this is, what barriers do you have in delivering this, in producing this, and executing on this, or whatever, right? And, write those things down. And your job as a leader is to try to help remove those barriers. Because, like, imagine if you were the business owner, maybe you are the business owner, why would you ask people to do stuff and, and set your business up so that when you ask them to do the things that you want to get done, they're super frustrated when they try to do those things. why would you do that? And basically take money out of your own pocket and burn it. You know, that you're basically creating a situation where you're just like wasting time and money and causing frustration.

Jonathan: 29:17

I, you know, my business partner has, he keeps his sign on his desk. And so I've started doing this as well. It says, you're talking to the experts. And here's where I think this is so powerful, John, is that I, if you're a leader, or if you're at least a good leader, a good business owner, hopefully you are not doing every task in your department. Otherwise, you should be a doer. You shouldn't be a leader, right? Which means you don't have the context to understand all the different implications, right? You can design the best process and then, you know, define some pinpoints, and maybe you're gonna get 60, 70, 80% of the way there, but you need your team to provide that feedback. That's why I love this question, that you pose around like, what barriers do you think you'll have in this? And, and getting their input. That feels powerful.

Dr. John Austin: 29:59

Cool. Thank you. you would be not, you wouldn't be surprised based on what you just said, but like a lot of people would be surprised at how many projects. That I've coached that get to this point and they're like, oh, they're not doing it. Cuz I didn't give them the sign in info. and here I was super pissed off that nobody does anything I ask them to do and like cussing them upside one down the other and all that. Right? Like super frustrated and uh, and it was my fault in the end, right? Like, that happens all the time. Of course it does because we all make mistakes, right? So you gotta encourage them to talk to you about what the barriers are. And by the way, that's another element that's really important to all this. And there's a whole section in one of the chapters on psychological safety. That's one of the key foundational elements to make any of this stuff work in the first place. Which by the way, back to the start of this, we don't really ever talk about an OBM, it's not in any of the publications in O B M, it's become more popular outside of OM these days. But we need to be studying this stuff more. So, all right. Identify barriers. a subpoint to that is maybe you use something that has a little more structure, like the performance diagnostic checklist or the PDCHS, and you walk through and ask those questions to help you to remember and not leave anything out, you know? Um, so you do a little deeper analysis potentially there, um, because we know that if you come up with function-based, even if it's a basic functional assessment here, like with a PD C, if you come up with function-based solutions, they work, uh, faster, they're more effective, and they're more durable. so it's worth it a lot of times if it's a big opportunity.

Jonathan: 31:40

Because we do have some non behavior analyst listening define function-based solutions for me.

Dr. John Austin: 31:45

Oh yeah. Thank you, man. so function-based solutions just means you're pairing the solution to the cause of the problem. That's the way I would think about it. Maybe you can help me hone my language a little bit, but like, that's the way I talk about it in, say, a construction or manufacturing, operation. you can try to offer a pizza party to get'em to do the thing, but if there's a big barrier, they're gonna have to like pizza a lot to continue trying to get around this barrier. Right? Like it's silly. You just remove the barrier and you get an immediate improvement. and by the way, that's the difference in my mind at least between behavior modification of the sixties and ABA of present day. ABA deals with function-based solutions. You're trying to treat or identify the causes. And provide supports to solve those problems or causes address them. All right, so thanks for asking that Manam. alright, so the three-step process in setting expectations or agreeing on expectations, you define what the behavior is and describe why it's important. You ask them what they think and ask what the barriers are. Maybe you do a PDC or you dive a little deeper to find the causes, of the behavior change or the challenge. And then number three, you tell them what you're gonna do to support them. So you make a commitment and you ask them to commit to doing or working on this pinpoint as well. And you ask them explicitly like, okay Jonathan, can you commit to working on this? Cuz I'm gonna collect data, I'm gonna come back, we're gonna talk about it more. So you're telling them what's gonna happen and maybe that's all you're committing to, to do, to continue keeping an eye on it and providing support. Being there to answer questions, or help remove barriers and stuff. But you want them to commit to it too, because you know what that gives you, in some studies, it gives you a 15% improvement in engagement. Like right there, public commitment. Right. So like why wouldn't you do that? Cause it's awkward. Oh, sorry.

Jonathan: 33:48

I'm not at all surprised here, the 15%, I wouldn't be surprised if it's higher. John, the only way that I will exercise is if I sign up for a race or do something and then I tell my family and friends that I'm doing it and then I'm like, shit. At 6:00 AM I like, all right, well I gotta get up outta bed. Cause I've told other people, right? But this is so true. Just like empirically.

Dr. John Austin: 34:08

Totally, man. That's why, I mean, that's why Peloton works for me. I join these groups where it's like there's a weekly workout and they track your performance and then they share it back to the groups. You know, there's accountability, man. It's great. Sucks sometimes, but it's also the outcome's really good. So, yeah. Okay. So there's a caveat to this, uh, agreeing on expectations chapter and, it's in there, as well. But, sometimes leaders work on their own behavior Through this process. And that's a perfectly acceptable thing to do. Like don't work on your team, work on you first, and that's great. Like, I would like to deliver more praise to the team, let's say for example, right? So there you've got your pinpoint, you can measure. and then when it comes to setting expectation, it's more about self-management. So I give you a few steps in there to think about, like reflect on why this behavior's important to you. there's some evidence that that can produce a little bit of behavior change or, or some kind of movement in the right direction. But then also identify and remove any sources of friction that you might have for delivering praise, let's say. And add some encouragement. It doesn't have to be like a chocolate bar or anything tangible, but it could be you're gonna put up a graph and you know you're gonna put a data point on there at the end of the day. Or maybe you agree you're gonna share it out with someone, an accountability partner or even your team. I've seen leaders commit to, certain behaviors like returning phone calls within 24 hours, or returning emails within 48 hours, and then collect data on their own behavior and share it out to their team. Like they're just walking the talk man, right? they're providing supports at the point of performance to get a better behavior out of themselves or a behavior that they want, right? So it applies to us all. So you can still use this for self-management.

Jonathan: 35:57

I love it. All right. Well, we ready to go to, uh, step four delivering feedback. part of my question here is like, there is so much, I haven't read all the literature clearly, but I've read a lot of books on delivering feedback. How did you synthesize all of what you've learned over 30 plus years and get it into this step and what feels really important to you to want to communicate to the reader?

Dr. John Austin: 36:19

Yeah, the answer is, I didn't, I felt like impossible for me to synthesize it all. Like I'm sure I left out, as much as I put in or more. but there are some things that I chose to focus on. I mean, like, Okay, so I've got all the detail, some of the details in there for you to create a feedback plan. who's gonna deliver it, what's it gonna look like, how frequent is it, instead of logistical things and things that we know and some advice from the literature that we know works better than other things. Right? So that's in there. Um, but I think that the stuff that might make it a little bit unique compared to the research literature and, the BM literature really is, um, a couple things. Like, that trust factor comes in, right? So like, imagine that maybe you've seen this before. And and by the way, Nicole Gravina at University of Florida taught me this. we worked together a lot over the last, 15 years. what she used to say was like, imagine you're getting feedback and like there's a certain set of words, right? And the person gives you this feedback and you have a really negative reaction because you don't trust them or you don't have a strong relationship with them. Now imagine a different person who you have a strong relationship with and they get say the exact same set of words and you receive it as encouragement. we've all had that before, I think, right? And we've also tried to deliver feedback to somebody who, where the relationship maybe wasn't there and they reacted poorly to it, or we stepped too far and tried to push a little bit too far and we got frustration and didn't get the outcome that we wanted. Well, I think that's one of the unique things that I tried to bring to this book in this chapter is to get people thinking about have you developed the right relationship yet to give the kind of feedback that you feel you need to give? And if you haven't, or even if you're not sure, what could you do to get there? Right. Because I think that you have to have two things in place, at least. And there are lots of subpoints below these, but to make it simple, they have to believe you're trying to help them. And how do you, I don't know. We haven't studied that because believe, and it's so soft and like, how do you measure it? And there are a million problems, right? But this is a real thing that happens at work. if the person doesn't believe you're trying to help them, they're unlikely to accept any kind of corrective feedback. And this mostly goes for corrective feedback. Right? And then they have to trust that you have their best interest at heart and they have to trust and respect your advice a little bit. So I hit on how do you do those things a little bit? What are some behaviors you can engage in? And by the way, those can be focuses for projects too. So this whole thing, like really works together on it. So one thing that you might be able to do that would have people, believe you're trying to help'em and trust you more is improve your own behavioral integrity. So like, when you say you're gonna do something, you do it at a very high rate and they see that like you commit to them to do something, you do it on time, high quality, et cetera. That causes people to trust you more, to see you as more competent. And if you make a request, they're more likely to go above and beyond. And there's data on this outside of behavioral analysis in the broader behavioral science world, right? So you could focus on that as a project for yourself and then have the add-on benefits of being able to deliver better feedback and stuff. I also give a few stories in there about my own experience with getting to the point where you've got a strong enough relationship so the person is asking for your corrective feedback, and then how to handle that, how to get there. I mean, there are, probably a million ways to get there, but in my experience, I usually favor like a shaping approach, so you start off talking, not feedback and there are a whole series of steps that you have to go through before you even get to feedback. But recognizing positive things and giving positive feedback, recognizing strengths. these are all ways to open the relationship up a little bit to, also recognizing corrective things, right? So, I'll stop there, but that's rather than just like a cookbook of steps, like here's what works, here's what doesn't. It's more about, hey, have you reflected on how you're creating the right environment for the feedback to work?

Jonathan: 40:46

I really like that notion of behavioral integrity, which seems like really obvious, but, um, but right. Just being able to say, as a leader, or be aware of what you are committing to, whether it's in your one-on-ones or as you talk about goals that you're setting with your team. Like, you just gotta go and follow through on those things. And that can start really easy, right? If someone asks you for help to respond to a certain email and you respond to that email, boom, then you've got that little win that feels like it's on a road to building a stronger relationship. I like that, man.

Dr. John Austin: 41:17

every unre replied email is a little dose of extinction to the person who was sending it. Ooh.

Jonathan: 41:28

Yeah. Oh, I love it. Maybe that's an active, strategy to, put the email on six, but you're exactly right. Well, let's, let's go to step five then. You already started talking a little bit about, recognizing strengths in the context of building relationship. But, um, what's important to get right when it comes to recognizing improvement?

Dr. John Austin: 41:46

Man, this is a, this is another one that, there are entire books written on these, uh, on this thing. Aubrey Daniels has just about everything he's done since the seventies, has involved improving the use of positive reinforcement at work. So read anything that he's ever done or watch any of his videos and you get like a library of stuff. So it's a big thing to add something to, but I feel like there might be a couple of unique things in here. I think the thing that I see most in the organizations that I work in and even a b a organizations who, may know a lot about positive reinforcement, don't do it enough, or they do it in ways that could be improved. And here's what I mean. Like I see, uh, examples, like somebody delivers a presentation in an organization, right? And, a hundred people see it or. Even 10 people see it, they go back and they meet with those 10 people on a different topic. They're see them later in the day and no one says anything to that person who delivered the presentation. They don't say a word. They don't acknowledge the fact that the person put in whatever work that a lot of thought and effort into doing this thing. they didn't see one good thing in that presentation. No, I don't think that's probably the cause. There were probably lots, maybe hundreds of good things in the presentation, but I'm so focus, on my stuff and it's not my job to reinforce your behavior is kind of the way that people, it's the unwritten thing that people are telling me anyway, that I see. So I think the biggest opportunity is, um, it's kind of like see something, say something, but in a positive way. You know, we think about that as an enforcement strategy, but really, so many good things happen during the day. You don't have to praise them all, but. Find the high impact, high effort ones and find a way to say something about them or something to do. Uh, write a card. I mean, I give lots of examples in the book, and you can find, other books that do that even better, where, like, 1,001 ways to Reward your Employees. That's kind of a famous one, right? but it doesn't have to be tangible. my go-to is more about like something that's relationship building and really, really leaning on the power of the respect and the trust and everything else that you've been building, because I think that's way more powerful than a coffee mug or a hat or whatever you're gonna, you know, give out a pizza party or whatever, you know. I mean, you could do those things too, but don't, rely on tangibles. in ABA at least, pay for performance is really hot. that's kind of a hot topic and I feel like a lot of times we're trying to, uh, Build a process that allows us to not have to deal with this recognition part or deal with it automatically automate it, you know, take the people out of it a little bit. And I think that's a bad idea. Um, not that pay for performance is a bad idea or that it doesn't work. It it does for sure. that being said, there are thousands of ways to fail at it cuz it's really complex and lots of negative downstream impacts if you get it wrong. Like, one of my colleagues at Western Alice Dickinson studied it for like 35 years, you know, and she's like super smart and she still had things to study for that long. So, I don't know, man, I tend to lean toward the simpler things. If every one of your leaders found, I don't know, 10 good things to say about people's performance on their team every week you, it would be a different place. But they don't, they don't tend to do that. So I think the. High level organizing principle around this chapter. Um, but there's some data too, man. So, take it down a level or a notch or a few notches, there's some data on this too, right? So we know that if you look at the history of OBM literature and, and all the great data that we have when you do task clarification. So like clarifying the behaviors that are expected from somebody, you tend to get a 10 to 15% increase in those behaviors. And that's been reliably replicated since the seventies. Chris Anderson did a bunch of stuff in the eighties. They did a whole, special issue. Chris Anderson and, and, uh, Chuck Kroll. Um, check it out. It's great reading. It's in a whole variety of different industries, manufacturing, real estate, hotels, and they follow the same process every time. Task clarification first and then feedback, and then recognition. And so they made this up, right? they didn't talk about it as five steps, I put it in that order. But those things have been there forever. What they see is a 10 to 15% increase in those behaviors. But if you add feedback and praise, you get like 50 to a hundred percent more. but we leave that out. And so that gets me thinking about like, well, why do we leave out the feedback and reinforcement? Well, there are lots of reasons. One is that we don't know what to say maybe. So it's, maybe it's a knowledge and skills thing. we may not have developed a relationship so that they work well or they feel comfortable to do. and then the third one that I see really frequently is that people get too busy. And so I think that the, septic focus that we have on efficiency damages our relationships, right? we overdo it, man. We are like, if I go to 20 meetings, I'll be more effective than if I go to 10, you know, or I can't say no because who's gonna do it? we have all these things that we run through and then we have back to, back, to back to back to back meetings. We're never able to thank, we're never able to talk to our team. And so therefore we don't give feedback and reinforcement because you've gotta run the business. the feedback and reinforcement is elective. running the business is not elective, you know, and so the urgent things take over. So, I don't know. That's what I see a lot.

Jonathan: 47:24

This is like headline fodder, John. The septic focus on efficiency damages our relationships. It is so true. And look, as an ABA field these days, we have to keep getting more efficient, right? I get it. Like we've got wages are going up, we've got reimbursement, payer reimbursement rates that are going nowhere or even, you know, usually going down. So everyone's thinking efficiency. But when that happens, to your point, to the exclusion, Of the relationship and taking time to invest in it. Like that's, it's septic. It's septic. I, I think it's so true. You know, honestly, I have to b build time literally into my calendar so people can't schedule it to do a variety of different things that they're not, meetings doesn't make others, it's just like time I have to do stuff. I'm part of that is like, Hey, make sure I find To your point earlier, I Daniels like catch people doing something, right? we have to go out of our way, I think as leaders to find that thing and then take the time to provide a quick email or a phone call or a text or a video, whatever, and do the high-fi. I think that's important, man.

Dr. John Austin: 48:25

Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, I mean, you know about this. You've given me so many great examples. I mean, how did you double your acceptance rate for, BCBAs? I. New hires.

Jonathan: 48:37

yeah. Right, right. By like making the process twice as hard, but like most importantly, making sure they contacted our values and, um, and making sure they, they saw what authentic relationships really meant, that we actually listen. Right. And that knowledge of an individual recruiter, became the knowledge of the recruiting team and others, that's institutional knowledge around what that person, whom we're interviewing, um, became. it really was all around like showing that we listen and pay attention and that we were actively helping people to contact our values. Yeah.

Dr. John Austin: 49:11

you just described building relationships. I think

Jonathan: 49:16

a hundred percent. especially in this day and age of, um, chat, G P T and ai, look, there's a ton of things that. Computers and AI and these large language models can get better than humans. So True. And there's just stuff that's uniquely in our wheelhouse that a computer AI's never gonna do. And it feels like building that foundation for the strongest relationships is one of those.

Dr. John Austin: 49:37

Absolutely, man. I mean, you can Google the steps to improve performance, but that's not gonna make you do it.

Jonathan: 49:47

Exactly right. Exactly right.

Dr. John Austin: 49:50

And by the way, I, I'm a big fan of chat g p t, don't get me wrong. I think that there are lots of efficiencies that we can garner from it, for sure. I've been playing around with it quite a bit, and there was a webinar I gave not too long ago, and I was doing some research on it, and I, I thought, Hey man, let's ask chat g p t what studies have been published in ABA on, um, burnout. And it gave me a whole series of, data points. And then I asked what the sources were, and it gave me fake sources. It gave articles published by people who I, some of whom I know who did not publish that article. And it was not in that journal and it was a full citation. So like, yeah, man, it'll lie to you for sure.

Jonathan: 50:32

Oh dude. Okay, well that, that's blowing my mind and we're gonna have to have a separate follow up. It is true. ChatGBT I've become a big fan of using as well. But it can be super compelling cuz it's like you're having a conversation human. So you have to be careful of not over-indexing to like, oh, what it says is gospel and I will go out and do that.

Dr. John Austin: 50:52

Yeah, man, it can be really useful to someone who's an expert in their field. anyone in ABA who has read literature and stuff like that would've known, like I knew that they were false results, but someone who just coming into the field wouldn't have, and they probably would've cited it. And there's probably gonna be more and more. Stuff happening like that. So I think it's really, um, effective when you've got a field of expertise and you're just trying to summarize some things or go deeper or challenge your thinking or whatever. But you've gotta be able to fact check it.

Jonathan: 51:25

Amen. Amen. Don't abrigate your responsibility to finding the truth. So true. Well before John, we wrap up. you and I, in just a few short days, are gonna be doing a session at ABAI together, called become the Apply Behavior Analysis Leader. Your team deserves seven OBM strategies that can immediately level up your leadership. I gotta tell you, I am so stoked to be able to, present alongside you, man. This is like a longtime dream in mine. you're gonna be giving away copies of your book and tell me on Monday of, of ABAI right here in Denver, you are the invited O B M address. Tell me more about that.

Dr. John Austin: 52:01

Yeah. Uh, thanks. man, I'm looking forward to the workshop too. if any of you listening can register, we'd love to have you there. and if not, check in with us and we can get you some info on that and stuff. Um, but we're gonna have a blast, man. It's gonna be super fun. so really looking forward to working with you there. it's gonna be interesting and educational. It's not gonna be like death by PowerPoint. Bullet point, blah. It'll be, it'll be fun. hopefully my invited address is also fun, but I think it'll be less fun than us doing a workshop. but, uh, yeah, it's an OBM address and it's, it's called Creating an Environment for OM Solutions to Succeed. And it's really in keeping with the book and all the things that we've talked about here, you can imagine what some of the content is there, right? it's psychological safety, it's creating relationships and actually measuring your relationships. It's having effective conversations and asking good questions, and all the leadership stuff that really goes behind, uh, making O B M work or making ABA a work for that matter. I mean, there are lots of people in the field these days, uh, you know, Nicole Gravina and Greg Hanley and some others who have been talking about developing rapport. It's not unlike that. I'm just diving in and maybe using some softer words than, uh, than rapport. But we all know it's a thing. Why do we act like it's not, you know, like let's start talking about it and studying it. And I think it's a challenge for us to start bringing this stuff to the forefront and figuring out, how can we become more effective, continue to improve? So that's, that's what I'm doing. That's at noon, uh, on Monday. And, I think at one, right afterwards there's a meet and greet for the speakers and I'll be involved in that. So you can come and hang out and, I don't know, ask me some questions and challenge some of the thinking and stuff. And then directly after that, there's a, book signing. So I'll be signing my book at the bookstore. At, I think it's at two. It's all on the calendar.

Jonathan: 53:53

Rock on. Well, listeners, if you are gonna be at a B A I, that is a do not Miss session. go check out that, that invited BM keynote on that Monday. And yes, We promise you it will not be a dull workshop. We're gonna crush it. John, where can people find you online?

Dr. John Austin: 54:11

Uh, my, uh, my new website for ABA leaders is dr john austin.com. and I've got an existing website that's more focused on safety, and that's reaching results.com. So either one of those, all over LinkedIn or try to be and love to connect with, with any leaders on LinkedIn. I wanna also offer, maybe you're gonna have this, but hopefully we can offer a link up to your listeners where they can get a free audiobook download of my book and, uh, they can check it out. If you like it, maybe you can buy it, you'll be able to get it on Amazon, um, around the time of a b i at the end of May, beginning of June,

Jonathan: 54:48

uh, who does not like, uh, free 99. I will absolutely make sure that there's a link to that free audio download in the show notes. All right, sir, are you ready for your hot take questions?

Dr. John Austin: 55:00

Yeah, I think I'm a little scared.

Jonathan: 55:04

Oh, here we go. Which Smurf would you be?

Dr. John Austin: 55:08

Yeah, I, I don't know if it exists, but I'd say, uh, rocking Smurf. That's not a smurf, is it?

Jonathan: 55:17

I don't think so, but dude, why would there not have been a rock and smurf? Oh,

Dr. John Austin: 55:21

like, it's like symbol is like, like that

Jonathan: 55:25

with the rock out. Yeah. We're making for, for, if you're not on YouTube, we do have a YouTube channel. Go check us out. We're making the, uh, the rock sign right now. There needed to be one of those. Hey, chat, chat, G p t, generative ai. I mean, you can like, create those kinds of things these days. So maybe a listener's gonna do that. Uh, come share it back to us. What, what element on the periodic table do you most identify

Dr. John Austin: 55:47

with? I have got, I, I have no idea. I'm gonna say, you know, uh, helium because I'm feeling lightheaded at you asking me that question.

Jonathan: 55:59

Nice tie, dude. What year will AI enslave humanity?

Dr. John Austin: 56:04

I'm gonna go with, uh, 2025. I don't know. It's gonna happen fast and AI never sleeps, man.

Jonathan: 56:14

Right? You know, that's spot on. I mean, maybe I take the under on that, but the progress we're seeing in like days and weeks that you used to see would take years and decades. We are at a whole different pace that I don't think we fully appreciated yet. So, oh, not too far off, but we'll, hope you're wrong. John, what's the most played song on your Spotify and Apple Music list for 2023 so far?

Dr. John Austin: 56:38

I don't have the, uh, I don't have the actual data. I should have that. but I'm gonna say it is gotta be, um, it's gotta be a song by Snarky Puppy, off of their new album. One of those songs, cuz that one's been on continuous Rotate, for a few months. Yeah.

Jonathan: 56:57

That is some outstanding new jazz. I mean, some of the most proficient musicians alive today are in Snarky Puppy. Go watch their stuff on YouTube and watch how they record. Oh, it is mine. Good call, dude. What's your 2023 word of the year? I'm

Dr. John Austin: 57:15

gonna say, um, relationships.

Jonathan: 57:21

Well done. That's a tough one with that mic drop. John, this has been an absolute pleasure. Thanks for coming back on the pod. Can't wait to see you at ABAI

Dr. John Austin: 57:30

thanks for having me, man. I'm looking forward to it. We're gonna have a lot of fun.

Building Better Businesses in ABA

Episode 77: “Reaching Results: The Five Steps to Creating a Positive Work Environment" with Dr. John Austin

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