Advanced Supervisory Practice: Self-Assessment, Values, and the First Year as a BCBA Supervisor

Overview & Clinical Significance

The 2023 ABAI Post-Convention Workshop led by Linda LeBlanc offered an intensive, full-day format for BCBAs to develop their supervisory practice in a structured, applied context. This workshop format — extended time, interactive activities, and access to LeBlanc's accumulated supervisory research and practical frameworks — represents a qualitatively different training experience from a brief webinar or recorded course. The immersive structure allows participants to move through self-assessment activities, values clarification exercises, and agenda planning in real time, with opportunities for discussion and refinement that are not available in asynchronous formats.

The workshop is grounded in the same framework as LeBlanc and Sellers' (2022) resources for new supervisors, but the post-convention format draws on the energy and collegial context of a professional conference, bringing together BCBAs who are all at a similar developmental juncture — newly certified or early in their supervisory experience — and creating a community of practice that can extend beyond the workshop itself.

The learning objectives of the workshop — self-assessment of supervisory competence, values clarification, and agenda planning for supervision meetings — address the three dimensions of supervisory readiness that most new BCBAs find challenging. Self-assessment requires honest reckoning with the gap between clinical competence and supervisory competence. Values clarification requires reflective attention to the principles that will guide supervisory decisions. And agenda planning requires the practical skill of structuring supervision meetings to produce observable progress toward competency goals.

For BCBAs who did not attend the live workshop, this course provides access to LeBlanc's structured framework and activities in a format that can be completed with the recommended supplementary materials. The workbook and optional consulting supervisor text provide the depth of reference that supports ongoing practice beyond the initial learning experience.

Background & Context

Linda LeBlanc's contributions to the supervisory literature in ABA span decades and include both empirical research and practitioner-focused resources. Her work with Sellers on the New Supervisor Workbook synthesizes research on supervisory best practices, trainee development, and the organizational conditions that support effective supervision into a practical, usable format for working BCBAs.

The post-convention workshop format — offered in connection with the 2023 ABAI annual convention in Waikiki — reflects the field's recognition that supervisory training cannot be fully accomplished through didactic instruction alone. The BACB's requirement that supervisors complete 8 hours of supervision training before supervising fieldwork experience is a minimum threshold; the depth of supervisory competence required for excellent supervision of the next generation of behavior analysts requires sustained engagement with the research literature, with practical tools, and with reflective practice that the post-convention workshop model supports.

The self-assessment component of LeBlanc's framework is grounded in the educational psychology and professional development literature on metacognition — the ability to accurately monitor and evaluate one's own knowledge and skill. Research consistently shows that novice practitioners overestimate their competence in domains they have limited experience with (the Dunning-Kruger pattern), and that structured self-assessment with clear competency criteria is an effective intervention for calibrating self-perceptions toward accuracy. For new supervisors, accurate self-assessment is not just a professional development tool; it is an ethical requirement, since Code 1.01 demands that BCBAs recognize and work within the boundaries of their competence.

The consulting supervisor concept — which LeBlanc's optional companion text addresses — reflects a parallel structure in which the same developmental framework applied to trainees is applied to the supervisors themselves. A BCBA who provides supervision benefits from their own supervision — not as a permanent requirement, but as a support during the initial period when supervisory skills are being developed. This parallel structure models the principle that all professional learning, including supervisory learning, benefits from guided practice and feedback.

Clinical Implications

The clinical implications of this workshop's content flow through the supervisees that attendees will supervise. Every BCBA who develops a more effective supervisory practice produces trainees who implement procedures more accurately, develop clinical skills more efficiently, and are better prepared for independent practice. The downstream effects of improved supervision quality extend to every client that those trainees serve — the quality of the supervisory relationship at the top of the clinical hierarchy propagates through all the training relationships below it.

The agenda-planning component has particularly direct clinical implications. Supervision meetings that lack clear structure frequently drift toward case management — reviewing individual client situations without progressing toward systematic competency development. While case management is a legitimate and necessary component of supervision, it does not substitute for the deliberate building of the trainee's clinical repertoire. A well-structured agenda ensures that each supervision meeting advances specific competency goals, that the trainee's developing skills are monitored against explicit criteria, and that the supervisory relationship is organized around professional development rather than immediate problem-solving.

The values clarification exercise informs clinical practice by making explicit the principles that guide supervisory decisions. A supervisor who values trainee autonomy will respond differently to a trainee's clinical error than one who values strict protocol adherence — and both may be appropriate in different contexts. Making these values explicit allows supervisors to identify when their values are producing the outcomes they intend and when value conflicts within the supervisory relationship need to be addressed directly.

The self-assessment tools also have clinical implications for scope of practice decisions. A new supervisor who honestly identifies that they lack experience with specific clinical populations, assessment methodologies, or intervention approaches can make appropriate decisions about what to supervise — and can seek their own consultation in areas where their supervisory competence is limited. This protects both the trainee (who benefits from supervision that is actually within the supervisor's competence) and the clients (who are ultimately the reason that supervisory quality matters).

Ethical Considerations

The ethical considerations most relevant to this workshop center on Code 1.01 (operating within scope of competence), Code 4.02 (training supervisees using evidence-based approaches), and Code 4.05 (maintaining and communicating accurate records of supervision). The workshop's emphasis on self-assessment is a direct response to the scope of competence requirement — it creates a structured mechanism for BCBAs to evaluate their supervisory readiness before beginning to supervise, which is an ethical obligation rather than a professional development option.

The values clarification exercise has ethical dimensions because values guide clinical and supervisory decisions in ways that affect clients. A supervisor whose values lead them to emphasize rapport-building over procedural precision may inadvertently train supervisees who are warm but technically imprecise. A supervisor whose values lead them to emphasize data quality over the human dimensions of the supervisory relationship may train supervisees who are technically competent but interpersonally unskilled. Neither extreme serves clients well, and values clarification is how supervisors identify where their own balance lies and whether it is appropriate for the contexts in which they work.

The BACB's supervisory training requirements are in part a response to documented cases in which inadequate supervision produced trainees who were credentialed without sufficient competence. Attending a workshop like this one — and implementing its frameworks in practice — represents a commitment to exceeding the minimum standards and providing supervision that genuinely prepares trainees for the complexity and ethical demands of independent practice.

Code 4.06 requires BCBAs to evaluate the effects of their supervision, which connects directly to the data-driven approach to supervision that LeBlanc's framework supports. Supervisors who assess trainee competency at baseline, monitor progress against explicit criteria, and adjust their supervisory approach based on what the data show are fulfilling this requirement in a meaningful way.

Assessment & Decision-Making

The self-assessment component of this workshop involves rating one's current competence across the core dimensions of supervisory practice: knowledge of supervision research, skill in conducting baseline competency assessments of trainees, ability to design individualized supervisory curricula, competence in delivering specific and effective performance feedback, and capacity for reflective practice. The assessment provides a baseline that can be compared to post-workshop self-assessments and to later evaluations of actual supervisory behavior.

Decisions about which supervisory skills to prioritize for development depend on the results of the self-assessment and on the specific demands of the supervisory relationships the BCBA is about to enter. A BCBA who will supervise a trainee in a school setting needs to prioritize different skills than one supervising in a home-based early intervention program. The individualization that LeBlanc's framework supports requires that these contextual factors be considered alongside the universal elements of supervisory competence.

The agenda-planning activity involves decisions about what to include in each supervision meeting, how to balance different types of supervisory activities (direct observation, case review, didactic instruction, role-play, data review), and how to pace the curriculum to ensure that competency development proceeds in a logical and achievable sequence. These decisions are not arbitrary; they are informed by the trainee's baseline assessment, their current placement demands, and the competency criteria that the supervisory relationship is designed to address.

The consulting supervisor component — for those who have access to one — adds an assessment dimension in which the BCBA's own supervisory behavior is observed and evaluated. This meta-level assessment provides information that self-assessment alone cannot produce: how the supervisor actually behaves in supervision meetings, which may differ from how they believe they behave.

What This Means for Your Practice

The workshop's full-day format is designed to produce more than knowledge — it is designed to produce commitments to specific supervisory practices that participants carry back into their daily work. The most durable outcome is the self-assessment, which provides each participant with a personalized roadmap for supervisory development that is specific to their current skill level and professional context.

If you are completing this course without the physical workbook, consider accessing the Sellers and LeBlanc (2022) resource independently — the activities it contains provide the depth of engagement with the framework that a brief course summary cannot replicate. The values clarification exercise, in particular, benefits from extended reflection time and, ideally, discussion with a colleague or mentor who can challenge your thinking.

The most critical practice implication is to use an explicit agenda for every supervision meeting, document what was planned and what was accomplished, and review that documentation periodically to assess whether your supervisory curriculum is producing the competency development you intend. This level of documentation discipline is consistent with your ethical obligations and produces a record of your supervisory practice that you can learn from over time.