Preventing Crisis and Building Culture: Leadership Lessons with Dr. Paul "Paulie" Gavoni
Leadership in ABA is often reduced to titles. Owners, clinical directors, or supervisors are assumed to be the leaders simply because of their position on an organizational chart. But as Dr. Paul Gavoni (known to many as Dr. Paulie) explains, leadership is not about titles. It is about behavior.
In a recent episode of In the Field: The ABA Podcast, I spoke with Dr. Paulie, BCBA®, author, and organizational leader, about what it really means to lead in ABA. With experience spanning education, coaching, and organizational behavior management (OBM), he has seen both the damage caused by coercive leadership and the transformation that comes when leaders ground their practices in behavior analysis.
Why Leadership Behavior Matters
Dr. Paulie’s path into leadership was shaped by frustration. Early in his career, he often witnessed leaders using coercion to get results. Staff felt undervalued, cried in meetings, and operated in fear. At home, his partner challenged him to stop complaining and create change. That challenge led him back to school for degrees in educational and organizational leadership.
What he found was striking: all leadership theories, from servant leadership to transformational leadership, ultimately depend on behavior. The science of human behavior provides the tools to bring these theories to life.
For Dr. Paulie, the measure of a leader is simple: look at the behavior of their followers. Are staff engaged, valued, and supported? Or are they complying just enough to avoid punishment? The difference lies in whether leaders rely on coercion or positive reinforcement.
Leadership as Behavior, Not Title
Too often, titles confuse the issue. A director or COO may hold power but fail to inspire or support their team. As Dr. Paulie puts it, “positional authority leaders” can be destructive when they misuse punishment or neglect reinforcement. He argues that anyone can be a leader, whether a BCBA®, an RBT®, a teacher, or even a parent, because leadership is not about hierarchy. It is about functional response classes of behavior.
This shift matters in ABA because outcomes for clients are inseparable from the environment provided for staff. If technicians feel unsupported or coerced, their work with learners suffers. Conversely, when staff are led with clarity, reinforcement, and trust, clients benefit.
The Four Hats of Leadership
To make leadership practical, Dr. Paulie developed the Four Hats Framework. Each hat represents a functional response class of leadership behavior.
The Leading Hat (Motivation and Inspiration) Leaders must create a “want” for people to engage in valued behavior. This is about establishing motivation by connecting to values and showing what is in it for them. Without this, staff compliance is likely to be shallow and short-lived.
The Training Hat (Skill Acquisition) Motivation is not enough. Staff need the knowledge and fluency to perform pivotal skills. Training should go beyond competency checks to ensure behaviors generalize and contact natural reinforcement.
The Coaching Hat (Generalization and Support) Coaching bridges training and real-world practice. Through questioning and feedback, leaders help staff perform well enough and long enough to experience naturally occurring reinforcement. Coaching ensures new skills stick.
The Managing Hat (Maintenance and Systems) Even strong performance drifts without systems. Management creates routines, accountability, and reinforcement structures that sustain valued behavior. Effective systems focus on recognizing growth and providing supportive correction, rather than relying on coercion.
Together, these four hats offer a blueprint for leading individuals, teams, and organizations with behavioral precision.
Feedback as the Core of Leadership
Feedback is the thread that ties all four hats together. Whether inspiring, training, coaching, or managing, leaders must provide clear, timely, and actionable feedback. Yet feedback is often misunderstood. It is not just about correction. Feedback can:
Start new behavior.
Maintain existing behavior.
Stop or redirect ineffective behavior.
Prompt reflection and problem-solving.
Good feedback connects behavior with outcomes. For staff, the most powerful reinforcement comes when their actions produce valued results, such as learner progress or smoother classroom routines. Leaders must help staff see those connections and ensure their environment is rich with reinforcement.
Systems, Safety, and Crisis Management
Leadership is not only about motivation and coaching. It also shows up in high-stakes environments. Drawing from his work with the Professional Crisis Management Association (PCMA), Dr. Paulie highlights how leadership directly impacts staff and learner safety.
The best crisis management, he argues, is prevention disguised as daily practice. Leaders must design systems that emphasize antecedent strategies, teach staff fluency, and reduce reliance on restraint. And when physical safety interventions are necessary, fluency is essential to ensure they are used safely and rarely.
Radical Vulnerability and Self-Leadership
Leadership also requires looking inward. Dr. Paulie emphasizes the importance of radical vulnerability: admitting mistakes, reflecting on impact (not just intent), and modeling growth.
He points to tools like the ACT Matrix and his own Behavioral Alignment Compass as ways leaders can clarify values, notice their own covert behaviors, and align actions with long-term goals. Before leading others, leaders must first lead themselves.
Quick Wins for ABA Leaders
So where can ABA leaders start? Dr. Paulie offers a few practical entry points:
Reflect on your own leadership impact. Are staff engaged, motivated, and valued, or simply complying?
Identify which leadership hat you are wearing in a given moment. Are you inspiring, training, coaching, or managing?
Evaluate your feedback practices. Are you reinforcing growth four times as often as you correct?
Examine your systems. Do they reinforce valued behavior and prevent coercion?
Practice self-leadership. Clarify your values and measure progress toward them.
Building Environments that Empower
At the heart of Dr. Paulie’s message is a simple but profound truth: to bring out the best in learners, we must bring out the best in the people who support them. That requires leaders at every level engaging in behaviors that inspire, equip, and sustain others.
Leadership is not about power or position. It is about arranging environments where staff feel valued, produce valued outcomes, and grow alongside the learners they serve.
Key Takeaways
Leadership is defined by behavior, not titles.
The Four Hats of Leadership (Leading, Training, Coaching, Managing) provide a practical framework.
Feedback drives all aspects of leadership and should be rich in reinforcement.
Systems must be deliberately designed to sustain valued behavior and prevent coercion.
Self-leadership and radical vulnerability are essential for modeling growth.
Strong leadership in ABA is not about titles or authority. It is about behaviors that inspire, equip, and sustain the people who make meaningful outcomes possible. To hear the full conversation with Dr. Paulie Gavoni, listen to this episode of In the Field: The ABA Podcast. For more resources on training, supervision, and professional development, visit Sidekick Learning.
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