There is power in knowing. Knowing Who You are. Knowing where you stand- with yourself.
And it starts with self. Not with data. Not with organizations. And not with policy. These things give footing to the individual spine we each possess. Having identity and spine is one of the most powerful things. Knowing who you are and where you stand with yourself is important. But what happens when the You is a profession and an organism? A system? We keep forgetting our value and our value add when systems collapse, get called out, and don’t work. We forget this when we migrate from space to space. When we lose the understanding that we bring the party and the value, we forget that we are the holders of the system. We have purpose, collaboratively so.
We carry responsibility, the organization and ourselves. And with this, we must stand up.
Present clearly.
Know who we are and act accordingly.
Spine up.
We owe it to ourselves and our consumers. In the world of marketing and bad press, many will often say remain quiet – head down- and it will blow over. This adage may have worked before. But, with socialized stories, message boards, social media…visibility and scrutiny…invited or uninvited…we need to spine up.
If you don’t know how you are. If you don’t stand in who you are. If you don’t define yourself, another person will. And they will do so in the most vulnerable moments and spaces you occupy. And our silence and internal fighting will serve as evidence that they are right about you.
- We knew we had a data problem. Too much. Too little. Analysis from a big picture lens. Got it.
- We knew we had a workforce stability issue. Turnover. Cost. Value. Devalue. Got it.
- We knew that tiered systems are important but needed a generational workforce evolution. Got it.
People will shape your narrative in a way where the weaker parts of the professional body will acquiesce in part because you gave them no direction. These voices will become loud and more resounding acting as chameleon’s because that’s what chameleon’s do.
To be clear. this is not in defense of the profession. I’m an SLP-BCBA and trust me that special education, speech pathologists and more have issues too. But applied behavior analysis is unique in that it is applicable across so many fields of study; people are coming for you. But if applied behavior analysis has a weak spine and waning structures…applied behavior analysis will crack under pressure.
A profession with a weak spine will bend to a narrative it did not create.
Applied Behavior Analysis does not have a marketing problem. It has a spine problem. Standing up with all bones and muscles aligned for purpose. Neck turning directionally towards the outcomes being reinforced internally by its value proposition and the outcomes families and people can see. And with the spine, we use the musculature of the mouth to say that loopholes present or not, require daily integrity. To act without integrity does burden the body and labors the movement. But, we must decide what we carry. What burdens will we carry? What ownership we will own in the misaligned ethics of others? This means that we will need to ACT and Reflect ourselves first.
Integrity is not a policy. It is a posture. It is present when conference doors closed. It is present when the spotlight is off. Ethics guide behavior. But individual integrity determines where the ethics live.
Integrity is personal before professional ethics can be actualized.
This is where it gets hard. We can separate personal conduct from professional ethics. We can ask for integrity in clinical work while ignoring the integrity our personal relationships require when away at conferences. This is decision making in action. This is your spine and operating system. The same contingencies shaping personal behavior are the same shaping professional behavior.
And people see it.
They feel it.
So, the question is not “Is ABA is good or bad?” That’s a simple discussion. Lightweight even. The larger question is “How do we arrive at a place where integrity is optional?” remaining in the shadow of a professional climb.
And we must decide what we carry. What burdens and belongs to us. The integrity we read about in the news article is not new. It does bring a larger discussion, if we allow it…
We must examine:
- Who we elevate
- Who we ask and what they represent when no one is watching
- Why do we elevate them?
- Who’s on our conference selection committees and why
- Why are a few guarding ethics without question about their own ethics?
This time, we need to be thinking about Spine. Alignment.
Ethics belongs to all of us. We are the hotline calling and tapping into our own integrity.
There is no remembering who you are when you didn’t know in the first place.
So, define it. Stand in it.
No more individual voices seeking singular visibility and acting discriminately when the lights are off.
We need people who can stand in their integrity across all the domains of their lives. Because if integrity does not generalize, it is not integrity. Just words.
But that’s what happened? Isn’t it? Loopholes will be around long after. But who are you when the loophole stares you in the face. Who are you when you seek to ruin a practice because it opened next door? It’s integrity.
When integrity and ethics are aligned, people do not have to guess.
They Know.
