More Than a Supervisor: How Mentorship Shapes Clinical Decision Making and Career Growth in ABA with Dr. Becky Eldridge

In this episode of In the Field: The ABA Podcast, I sit down with Dr. Becky Eldridge, Ph.D. BCBA-D, researcher, and mentor with 17 years of experience in behavior analysis. Becky brings both personal passion and scholarly depth to the topic of mentorship, having completed her dissertation on clinical decision making for BCBAs and having witnessed firsthand what happens when new behavior analysts enter the field without adequate support. We dig into what mentorship actually is, how it differs from supervision, and why that distinction matters so much for new BCBAs who are trying to find their footing. 

Key Topics:

Supervision vs. Mentorship: Not all support looks the same. Supervision is often tied to performance outcomes that may serve an organization. Mentorship centers on you. Your goals, your values, and what is meaningful to you. Knowing the difference can change who you turn to and when.

Finding the Right Fit in a Mentor: Trust matters, but so does experience. Becky recommends Brené Brown's BRAVING Inventory as a starting point for evaluating fit, and emphasizes finding someone who has actually navigated the situations you are facing.

Internal vs. External Mentorship: Becky makes a strong case for seeking mentorship outside your organization, especially early in your career. When competing contingencies exist between what is good for you and what is good for the organization, true objectivity is hard to find internally.

What Mentorship Actually Looks Like: At its core, mentorship is about building self-management.

Formal vs. Informal Mentorship: Formal mentorship means dedicated time and a mutual commitment to showing up consistently. Informal mentorship happens more organically, through relationships that develop over time without a structured agreement. 

Mentorship and the Evolution of the Field: The field has grown fast, and mentorship has not always kept up. Becky's advice is simple: stop waiting for it to find you. Get involved in your state chapter, go to your state conference, and meet people. 

Key Takeaways:

• Supervision is about specific performance outcomes. Mentorship is about supporting your goals and your growth.
• A sponsor is someone who creates or advocates for opportunities you would not have had otherwise, and that role can be distinct from both supervisor and mentor.
• Trust is essential in a mentoring relationship, but experience matters just as much. Find someone who has done what you are trying to do.
• Seek external mentorship, especially early in your career, when you need perspective.
• Mentorship can be formal (dedicated time, clear expectations) or informal (opportunistic, reciprocal, peer-based). Both are valuable.
• If you are waiting for the perfect moment or the perfect person, stop waiting. People are people. Ask.

Resources Mentioned:

• Building and Sustaining Meaningful and Effective Relationships as a Supervisor and Mentor, by Dr. Linda LeBlanc, Dr. Tyra Sellers, and Dr. Shahla Ala'i-Rosales
• Dare to Lead by Brené Brown, including the BRAVING Inventory (available free on her website)

Connect with Dr. Becky Eldridge:

• LinkedIn: Becky Eldridge
• Website: https://beckyeldridge.com/

Keywords:

BCBA mentorship, ABA mentorship, supervision vs mentorship, clinical decision making ABA, new BCBA support, BCBA career growth, self-management behavior analysis, ABA leadership, fieldwork supervision, behavior analyst professional development, Becky Eldridge, In the Field ABA Podcast, Sidekick Learning

Disclaimer:

BCBA®, BACB® [or any other BACB® trademark used] is/are registered to the Behavior Analytic Certification Board® BACB®. This website and products are not in any way sponsored by the BACB®.

All information and products are for educational purposes only. 

Transcript

Becky Eldridge: [00:00:00] To me, anytime I'm watching someone's performance, I'm more doing supervision. And I think mentorship is a little bit more of like asking, "How did that go? How did you think that went?" Because with mentorship, the goal is really to get someone to self-detect when things are going well and when things aren't going well.

And maybe that's the defining feature is self-management. You know, like I'm supporting self-management versus teaching you discreetly how to do something.

Allyson Wharam: Welcome everyone. I am here with Dr. Becky Eldridge for another episode of In the Field, and today we're going to be talking about mentorship. Becky, thank you so much for being here. I will let you go ahead and introduce yourself and talk a little bit about you and your background and why this is something that's especially near and dear to you.

Becky Eldridge: Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Allyson. My name is Dr. Becky [00:01:00] Eldridge and I have been a BCBA for 17 years and have really grown a huge affinity for mentoring new BCBAs. I see a lot of folks who are really passionate about the field and struggle in their early years because it might not be what they thought it was gonna be.

Or I hear people say like, I kind of miss being an RBT or doing direct care. I didn't realize that the BCBA position would be like this. And that makes me sad because I see so much possibility for our field and I've had great opportunities to have leadership positions at various organizations, and when I see people who are newly certified and passionate and their candle gets burned out, so to speak, um, it makes me really sad.

And, and I think part of that is from our systems, we've moved from, you know, things that were [00:02:00] kind of mom and pop shop to more big box ABA. There's more access for individuals with legislation that's come through for autism services, more people have access to behavior analysis, but with that comes more companies coming in trying to, you know, turn a profit.

And I think that the BCBA gets lost in that. So that's really what I've come to be really passionate about. I did my dissertation on clinical decision making for BCBAs. So, you know, how BCBAs are thinking through things and what different factors and variables are having an effect on their decision making, I think is huge.

And I think a huge part of that is mentorship and how people are supported in their roles and what decisions they make clinically are reflection of the systems that they're in. So it's a little bit about me. I know I went a little bit more about why I'm passionate about mentorship, but it is near and dear to my heart [00:03:00] because I love being a behavior analyst and it makes me sad seeing people get burnt out.

Allyson Wharam: Yeah, all of it is very interconnected. We do have a listener question that will kick us off. And just so that everyone knows, this is something newer that we are doing, if you go to www.sidekicklearning.net/podcast, there's a place there to enter questions that you have about supervision or training or leadership, mentorship, any of those topics, that we will discuss here on the podcast.

So you can go to that website and ask whatever questions or suggest topics, things that you wanna hear us chat about. So this question is, I recently became a BCBA. I don't feel as confident in my clinical decision making as I thought I would, and I'm realizing how much I still have to learn now that I'm more on my own.

I've heard people talk about mentorship, but I honestly don't really know what that looks like or how it's different from supervision. Is mentorship something I should be looking [00:04:00] for?

Becky Eldridge: That's a great listener question. Whoever wrote that in, thank you. Yes, they are different. Supervision and mentorship are different and one of my favorite books that I have here, 'cause I knew we were gonna be talking about it, is Building and Sustaining Meaningful and Effective Relationships as a Supervisor and Mentor by Linda LeBlanc, Tyra Sellers, and Shahla Ala'i Rosales.

And it is a phenomenal book. I would recommend you get it if you're at any point in your career. It's cheaper on the publisher's website Sloan Publishing than it is through Amazon. I think it's like 10 bucks cheaper on the publisher's website, so definitely go check that out. But, they define the difference between a supervisor and a mentor really nicely.

They talk about a supervisor being someone who's in charge of performance and is really looking at, you know, making improvements to performances that are gonna lead to certain outcomes for the organization or for the system. And so when we talk about a BCBA working [00:05:00] perhaps at an autism clinic, for example, the supervisor who's supervising that BCBA, maybe they're a clinical director, or some sort of a director or senior BCBA, they're really looking at are you getting your treatment plans in on time?

Are you meeting your billable hours? Are your clients making progress towards their goals? So they're looking at those discreet outcomes. A mentor is different in that they are trying to support performance that leads you to your goals. So instead of an organization or a system choosing your goals or your performance criteria, this is something you are choosing.

This is something that's meaningful to you, that's valuable to you. What are your reinforcers and how can I as a mentor help you get to those? So a mentor is, is much more of a guide rather than a performance manager. They're gonna be someone who's gonna ask you questions about like, why is this meaningful to you?

What are [00:06:00] the types of things that you find valuable about this experience and really help lead you to those things. There's a third role that they talk about in the book called a sponsor. And this is someone who's a little bit, maybe more established in the field and not only are they perhaps mentoring or supervising you, but they're also putting you up for greater opportunities?

So like, um, I can give an example. My PhD advisor, Dr. Stephanie Peterson, she's well recognized in the field. She gets asked to speak all over the country and the world, and one time she took me to Singapore to go, you know, talk to some educators who were running some special education schools in Singapore and that was a sponsorship activity.

So no one would've called me out for that. And she said, you know, I'd love to come, but I wanna bring my colleague Becky with me. Is that okay? And so that would be a sponsorship, someone who's putting you out for opportunities that you wouldn't have otherwise had. I think [00:07:00] the important thing to note with those three roles is that they could all be the same person, but they could be three different people.

So it really depends on like how those roles are. I think when we talk about dual relationships, if someone is your supervisor at an agency, they may not also be able to sponsor or mentor you because there's a bias or there's a conflict of interest. If they're looking for, you know, improvement in billable hours and you're looking for improvement in job satisfaction, those two things may go together, but they may not.

And so when we think about what would motivate someone to encourage you to do a different behavior, to reach a goal, there may be a conflict of interest there. And that they want you to meet your billable hours. And you're saying, no, I wanna have more work life balance. And so, those two could be [00:08:00] the same, but they could also be different.

Allyson Wharam: Yeah. Even internally, they might still be a sponsor, but maybe they're more coming at it from the frame of, I'm a sponsor for more internal opportunities and things like that. So just being aware that, that it shifts a little bit when you have all of these competing contingencies that they could still wear those hats or you could have someone who is external, who is both a mentor and a sponsor, but not a supervisor.

I picture a Venn diagram in my head a lot of times when I'm thinking of a person. And yeah, that the roles themselves are distinct but sort of interconnected. But, it really depends on the person and how that person is kind of operating within a context as well.

Becky Eldridge: I love that you said Venn diagram. Because I think about times that I've had a supervisor who's also a mentor and when we think about dual relationships, it's can we mediate those relationships effectively? Yeah. And someone will say. As your supervisor, I [00:09:00] want to tell you to do this.

And then they'll be like, sidebar as your friend,

Allyson Wharam: Mm-hmm. Yes.

Becky Eldridge: I'm gonna tell you this is what you should do. And so when you have people who can, you know, somewhat differentiate those roles, that's really helpful because they can come at it from like, as your friend, I see you're not happy in this job, and I think you should find a job somewhere else. As your supervisor, I want you to stay like

Allyson Wharam: mm-hmm. Yeah.

Becky Eldridge: Because I value your work. So I think it's, it's exactly like you said, it's the Venn diagram. Some people are gonna be outside that circle of connectedness and some people are gonna be inside all three.

Allyson Wharam: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And when we're thinking about new BCBAs, even thinking about the supervisor role, depending on the organization and the infrastructure and things like that, you might have more autonomy or thinking about it differently, you might also have less opportunities for mentorship and growth and things like that. Um, not that those are mutually exclusive, but in terms of an [00:10:00] organizational structure, different organizations treat ongoing growth and development differently than other organizations.

So when thinking about an internal supervisor, mentor, or an external one, how does that person play a role in building the confidence or clinical decision making or ability to operate independently of a new BCBA who is struggling?

Becky Eldridge: You mean within or outside, or both?

Allyson Wharam: Uh, really both. Well, so I started asking about inside, but then really that person could be external as well.

So when we're thinking about, I guess just to reframe, thinking about you're a new BCBA, as is in this question, you're a new BCBA who just feels lost. And I think we see that a lot because fieldwork supervision doesn't always prepare people super well for the realities of the job. There are all these new situations that you're in, new contingencies and timelines and you know, just [00:11:00] all of this stuff that is difficult to even replicate in well-designed supervision just because it's the realities of the job.

And so when you're thinking about that new behavior analyst, what role or how can mentorship either internally or externally, help build that person up?

Becky Eldridge: Yeah, I, I think internally I've served as both internally and externally, and I think internally, um, that BCBA, if you're looking for a mentor that's internal to your agency, I would say there's some basic questions you should ask.

Like, is this person going to counsel me, even if it's not in the best interest of the company? Will they give me advice that is different from the bottom line of the agency? And if the answer is no, I probably wouldn't seek mentorship from that person to [00:12:00] build me up. I also think there's some crucial conversations that people need to have when they're starting a relationship to figure out if someone could be their mentor.

And one of those is really, like how is this mentor gonna help me reach my goals? And so, I think that those are things are very different than performance goals within the agency. So if the person's goals are like, I want my clients to have really strong treatment plans that they're making progress on regularly, but I wanna complete it during work hours.

How can you help me do that work that I'm not taking it home. And if a mentor can't answer that question or if the person can't answer that question, I don't think they're a good mentor. It's gonna be a lot around setting boundaries. Sometimes say no to taking on an extra client so that you can be more effective with your [00:13:00] clients.

And so, I'm a huge fan of Brené Brown, for people that don't know, I don't go too many days without mentioning her name. She has a book called Dare to Lead and in there she talks about the braving inventory. And it's really about how to build trust between people. And I think that mentorship role really has to have, like, I'm trusting that you have my best interest at heart.

Mm-hmm. And so the braving inventory. It's an acronym, braving, and we love acronyms in ABA. So it's boundaries, reliability, accountability, vault, integrity, non-judgment, and generosity. And I'm not gonna go into all those things, but I definitely think folks should check it out. You can go on her website, she has free printouts of it.

But, I would kind of go through that inventory with the person to see, do they meet all these criteria for me? Do they keep what I say to themselves or are they talking to others about it? Do they help me set good boundaries? Do they [00:14:00] help me be generous with my skills while setting good boundaries?

If I come to them and tell them I messed up on something, are they gonna judge me for it? Or is it gonna be a place of non-judgment? So I think those are good representations of some soft skills that you would wanna be looking for in a mentor.

Allyson Wharam: Yeah, I think that's helpful in terms of thinking about fit and has me wondering what other aspects of fit are important as you're thinking about a mentor, like we have the trust piece, do they have your best interests at heart?

But, that might be true for a lot of people. How do you know if one person is a better fit as a mentor for you than another person potentially?

Yeah, so I, I think the other part about it is there's a lot of debate in our field and I think you actually have a podcast coming out about what is an expert. Yeah.

Becky Eldridge: Um, but somebody, you know, who is an expert in your role. So, if someone is wanting [00:15:00] mentorship with insurance funded treatment plans, or they want mentorship working in a school, you should probably seek out someone who's actually done that. I'm not saying they have to have published articles or things like that, but someone who's had that experience and who's navigated it in a way that's aligned with their values.

So I think it's both a trust, but it's also that experiential piece that they can help you through that. And part of that trust too comes into play, like I have had people who've been in situations that I haven't been in ask me to mentor them. And part of it is me saying, I don't have this experience, but I know this other person that does, can I refer you to them?

So while we have a growing number of behavior analysts, I think we're up past 80,000 now.

Allyson Wharam: Yeah. I think we are past 80,000 now. We were right on the, the cusp for a bit, but yeah, I think it is. It's over.

Becky Eldridge: We're still a very small field in many ways and a lot of [00:16:00] people know other people.

And so I think the other thing is to not be afraid to, once you find someone you trust, if they're not the right fit experientially, they probably know someone who could be. And so, someone who's willing to give referrals and maybe that person is like your mentor in finding a mentor, like

Allyson Wharam: mm-hmm.

Becky Eldridge: You can mentor people in a ton of different ways. But it's really, you know, finding someone who has the experience of what you're going through that you want support with and also has your best interest.

Allyson Wharam: Yeah, I think that experience piece is a big one. And have they done this and have they been successful at it?

Whatever that success looks like for what you're looking for and for your goals. So when we're thinking back to the organizational lens and structuring and providing opportunities for mentorship within the organization, at the organizational level, have you seen this done well or do you have thoughts [00:17:00] about what an organization could do to structure this well?

Becky Eldridge: Yeah, that's a bit of a loaded question. I think it's really hard to do it within the organization. And I say that, not to say that no one's ever done it successfully within an organization. There's a lot of organizations that have mentorship programs, and I'm not, you know, aware of how they're working.

So I'm speaking from my own experience and it has been hard being in a director position or an upper level administrative position because the advice that I'm giving people often is in conflict with the best interest of the organization. And for me, like my two values are integrity and compassion.

So I'm always [00:18:00] gonna go with what's right over what's gonna make money. But sometimes that makes me not a very good leader in an organization because I sometimes make decisions that cost people money, but my ultimate thing is like, without integrity, what do we have? Mm-hmm. So I do think it's possible within organizations.

I think in an ideal situation, if I were to like come up with an ideal situation, it would be like mentors across the organization that don't have any say in this person's promotion and tenure, you know, they don't know anything about their billable hours. They're just mentoring them in this skill.

They don't know about their performance or have anything there. I think then you might get a true mentorship model, but I would encourage folks to seek outside mentorship. And I, I say that as someone who has historically stayed at organizations for a long time. Like before I went back to school to get my PhD, I [00:19:00] worked as a behavior analyst at a school for five years.

Like I stayed there. Mm-hmm. And then when I got my PhD, I worked at Western for almost 10 years. I don't typically jump around a lot, and so I, I stay for a while at places. That said, I think for new BCBAs it's important because they haven't experienced a lot of other organizations to have someone who has to know, like, it's not like this everywhere or it is like this everywhere.

Mm-hmm. I think you get into like the, is the grass greener

Allyson Wharam: mm-hmm.

Becky Eldridge: conversation. So in some ways when we talk about insurance funded services, it's kind of like that in a lot of places, but there are boundaries that you can set up to still maintain job satisfaction and happiness in insurance funded places.

You just have to be willing to hold that boundary in those places. So I guess my suggestion is to seek [00:20:00] mentorship outside of your organization. And that's solely based on my personal experience.

Allyson Wharam: I am wondering if we were to operationalize mentorship, which actually I think we've gotten like way ahead and just like talking about all the variations and I'd love to drill down into, at the core level, what does mentorship look like?

Because even as I'm hearing you talk, I think there might be some distinction too in terms of mentorship is a little bit of an umbrella and if we're talking about mentorship in terms of career and skill growth and teaching and learning. There are certain things that might be more suited for happening under the umbrella of the organization.

You could probably do that internally or externally, but there might actually be some pros of being internal to the organization in terms of knowing the clients and things like that and vice versa. And so if mentorship is in this umbrella and you could get mentorship in so many different things

and focus areas, depending on what your goals are, there might be certain things that are well suited to organizational [00:21:00] mentorship. And then other things, if you're looking for, if you're really burnt out and you're looking, you know, for just career guidance and things like that, then maybe that's more of an external mentorship, because of what you said where, you have all these competing things.

So with all that being said, I'm curious your thoughts on that and then b I'm wondering if we could maybe just talk more about the nitty gritty of what mentorship is and is not, as we're talking about the different types of mentorship or approaches to it.

Becky Eldridge: Yeah. So, and this is where there's a bit of a Venn diagram between even those skills, what mentorship and what supervision are.

When I think about supervision, I think about building and maintaining performance. Those things like, okay, I wanna become more efficient with writing treatment plans, or I wanna become better with my soft skills with parents. You know, [00:22:00] like those are things I think that could be mentorship or they could be supervision.

Allyson Wharam: Mm-hmm.

Becky Eldridge: They lend themselves to both. If your organization has opportunities to get that training and that performance building, I think that that's great. Because like we're saying, it would be harder for me as an outside mentor to mentor someone in writing a more efficient treatment plan because I don't have consent to have access to their assessment goals and their data and all of that.

And their systems, whereas someone internally does. And so I, I absolutely think you're right. It's a difference between the skills as a behavior analyst, which I think you can get in mentorship too, in some ways. For example, I've got a mentee in California who hasn't had any practice with functional behavior assessments.

[00:23:00] Like, this person has basic, like rating scales. That's it.

Allyson Wharam: Mm. Mm-hmm.

Becky Eldridge: They've learned about it in coursework, but they haven't ever done it.

Allyson Wharam: Yeah.

Becky Eldridge: And so, in our mentorship, this person asked if I could do training with her, and I'm happy to do that, right? Mm-hmm. Like I have a lot of background in functional behavior assessment and functional analysis, and so we did a lot of training with that.

When it came to the actual functional analysis, we did some simulation training. So I have, because of some of the research I've done, I have access to scripts and things like that. So I pretended to be a client and had her respond accordingly. When it came to the actual functional assessment, if I'm to help this person do it, I need consent from the family, I need consent from the organization, like there's a lot more pieces that come into that.

Or I can say she's had as much experience as possible in this mentorship position, but now it needs to go [00:24:00] to somebody internally. Or, I'm now on the treatment plan. I'm now a provider.

Allyson Wharam: Yeah.

Becky Eldridge: For this client. So I think that's probably also the, maybe a deciding factor in like inside or outside. Do I need mentorship with a specific person?

Yeah. And do I need that live coaching while that client is present?

Allyson Wharam: Yeah. Yeah. And we're thinking really this is sort of an intervention that falls under mentorship or supervision. It's that subset that is a part of both. When you're thinking about the distinction, I appreciate that example 'cause I think it helps make it more concrete. When you think about the distinction for teaching for example, what would make something mentorship versus supervision? I know it's sometimes a little bit gray. But what would make it fall more on that side? So like someone is learning how to do an FBA. If it's falling under the umbrella of [00:25:00] supervision versus mentorship or is it that clean of a distinction?

Becky Eldridge: I think if it's supervision I'm probably looking for, you know, performance change over time. Whereas mentorship, I'm more giving guidance. So like,

Allyson Wharam: yeah,

Becky Eldridge: I guess I think of mentorship as a little bit more relying on self-report and you know, the person, I'm not watching their performance. In the example I gave you with the simulated clients, I was watching her performance, but that almost more felt like supervision. And that would've been an activity I would've done in a field work opportunity.

She asked for it, so I'm happy to give that training and probably we could have counted it as a continuing education situation. So I guess like to me, anytime I'm watching someone's performance, I am more doing supervision. And I think mentorship is a little bit more of like asking how did that go?[00:26:00]

How did you think that went? Because with mentorship, the goal is really to get someone to self detect when things are going well and when things aren't going well. And maybe that's the defining feature is self-management. You know, like I'm supporting self-management versus teaching you discreetly how to do something.

Allyson Wharam: Yeah. Which is what has me wondering, if you're a good supervisor, are you inherently somewhat of a mentor?

Becky Eldridge: I think eventually you get that way.

Allyson Wharam: Yeah.

Becky Eldridge: I think once performance reaches a certain level, and you should be incorporating that self-management. Yes. Like we're always trying to fade out. Right?

Allyson Wharam: Yeah. The self-management and even the like yes, there might be certain goals that if you're a supervisor that you have to meet for, whether it's field work and I need to make sure you're prepared for X, Y, and Z [00:27:00] or, for a specific role in an organization. But at the same time, we also should be partnering in thinking about like what are your long-term goals?

How do I build those skills? I see that a lot in field work. It can get so focused on here is the individual client that we're working with, which is obviously the core. Everything is dependent on the client, right? We have to make sure that everything is applied to a client.

You know, the board's been very, very clear about that. But at the same time, we are preparing someone for their entire career. They're not preparing them for their entire career, but setting the stage for their entire career, I should say. And so with that being said, incorporating like what their interests are, if there's subspecialty area that they're particularly interested in, you know, just like thinking about how do we either create opportunities or, you know, sponsor this where the sponsorship comes in, or leveraging our network so that they can get exposure in other areas.

Even if it's just, hey, we're not counting this for field work hours, but [00:28:00] I know this is an interest area of yours. And so here's an article I came across that I thought would be really interesting. You know, there's so many different ways that you can start to build that up and really incorporate interests into supervision as well.

Becky Eldridge: And I think even some of the stuff that like, and I'm sorry I'm saying about this book so much, but I just love this book.

Allyson Wharam: It is, it's a great book.

Becky Eldridge: It's, uh, you can see it's like, well loved. My book is well loved. There are topics in there that also are, I guess I think of like mentorship as being, there's some behavioral cusps that we work on.

So while we're working on like this end game of self-determination and self-management and self-monitoring, there's behavioral cusps for those that they hit in this book. So like time management, problem solving, like those are all skills that once you have them, if a problem comes your way, whether it's with a client, with a parent, with a coworker, with a system, [00:29:00] you have the skill to try and deal with that problem. And so I feel like a mentor would really remind you of like, okay, what do we do to solve problems? Like they may not directly dictate you through that problem, but they're gonna talk overtly about, these are the skills that we generally engage in. Okay, we have this problem.

Maybe we do a pro cons list. Maybe we do, like, we generate, we brainstorm solutions. We pick the one that's the most ethical, that's going to benefit everyone the most. And then we execute it, and then we see if it worked, you know? I think about all those things that you're saying, like, what are your interests? Okay. How do you manage your time to make sure that your interests are capitalized.

Allyson Wharam: Yeah. I don't even know what is out there. Yeah, yeah. All of those different facets. There's also a difference in formal mentorship arrangements and more informal [00:30:00] mentorship.

How do you think about that distinction?

Becky Eldridge: That's a good question. I've had a lot of mentors, informal mentors in my life, that I wouldn't have labeled, but I learned so much from them. And some of 'em, I don't even remember their names to be honest. Mm-hmm. Like I'll tell a story of my very first conference was CalABA in 2009, and I had either just passed, no, no, no,

I had just sat for the exam. This is in 2009 when you had to wait 45 days to get your results. I had taken it in February or whatever. Whenever the testing cycle was. I had just sat, we were headed to CalABA and I had a presentation that I was doing. Never presented a conference before, not a BCBA yet.

Scared outta my mind. The person who I would have labeled as my mentor was not. My formal mentor was not mentoring me in this, [00:31:00] but my formal mentor knew everybody and had all these connections and so I was like staying in a hotel room with a stranger from another ABA agency. And then we were doing this symposium with these three other speakers and one of them who I believe she was a PhD somewhere.

She could tell I was nervous and I was scared outta my mind. And we had gone to dinner the night before the presentation and she was like, hey, are you, are you ready for tomorrow? And I was like, no, not at all. I'm scared outta my mind. Like, and she was like, well after dinner, why don't we go check out the room that we're gonna be doing our symposium in and we can practice together.

I always like to do that before the talk. And I was like, we can do that. We're allowed. And she's like, yeah, all the, all the conference rooms are open. Like you can just walk in. This is my first conference I've never been. And I was like, okay. And I will never forget that she took me in there.

We set up our [00:32:00] laptops, you know, we couldn't plug it in 'cause this is also back in the day where you had to like plug your projector into that little thing with the screw wires, the VCA, I think, anyways. But we could practice in front of the room of empty chairs. And we did. And she was like, gave me such good, like, she didn't give me feedback on my performance, but she guided me and provided the opportunity for me to practice in the setting I was gonna be in.

You know, she told me she gets nervous all the time. It's okay, if you can get through the first minute and then take a breath. So she's giving me all this, this guidance. Really? Yeah. It's not like, oh, you don't say that like that. It wasn't feedback on my delivery. It was just, hey, try this.

And what if you take a deep breath after you say your first sentence?

Allyson Wharam: Mm-hmm.

Becky Eldridge: And so it's sad to me that I don't even remember her. She was someone that my mentor had connected us with for this symposium on [00:33:00] FAs in schools. And yeah, it was a game changer. And so I would say that was an informal mentor, but I speak regularly at conferences now and I always get nervous, but I'll never forget that.

And I always do go check out the room before I go and like kind of get an idea of the layout. And that was because of her. Anyways, so that's an informal. My experience with a formal mentor role is my PhD advisor. I still go to her, I text her when I'm having an issue. I'm like, hey, do you have time to talk tonight? We don't talk every day, every week, every month, but when there's an issue, I call her. And I would say the same with people that I've mentored.

I had a master's student when I was working at Western Michigan University. She calls me about, hmm once every eight to twelve months. And sometimes it's just a catch up, but other times it's like, oh my gosh, this happened. Please help me. What do I do? Yeah. And so those [00:34:00] were formal relationships and I'll always be there for her.

And I feel like mine will always be there for me, but I also think you have these informal, maybe like more opportunistic, based on a specific opportunity and

I guess I would say the person that labels themselves as your mentor isn't always.

Allyson Wharam: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, there's a couple things that stuck out to me about that example. One is you've now, like you said, have spoken at con. You know, you have years of experience during that. You probably at some point could and would have figured out that you can go down there ahead of time that you can practice, but how many conferences do you think you might have gone to before you figured that out?

So just like the shortcut that mentorship can allow by just letting you know like, hey, this is possible. This is how other people are doing it. You just don't know what you don't know until someone kind of gives you that guidance and that insight in terms of opportunity. [00:35:00] But as you were talking, I was thinking too about almost like

I don't know if, and maybe the exact label doesn't matter, but like peer to peer sort of mentorship where, you know, you have a peer network. I see it sometimes in group supervision where you have, you know, them kind of leaning on each other and maybe someone's further along in a certain area or has experience in a certain thing and someone else doesn't.

And so, you know, that might kind of evolve into sort of an informal relationship or from like a business perspective, I have, you know, peers that I collaborate closely with and that I think of as sort of informal mentors where they have experience in certain areas that I don't and can kinda give me their thoughts and coach me through things and vice versa.

Allyson Wharam: And so yeah, I hadn't really thought about like the peers as mentors necessarily, but I think that that might be, I don't know, is that, is that a formal.

Becky Eldridge: I think that's an informal, [00:36:00] possibly, like I, Allyson would consider you an informal mentor.

Allyson Wharam: Like likewise. So it can be reciprocal too.

Becky Eldridge: I think you have a lot of business acumen and as someone who's new to having her own business, I'm like, oh, what do we do?

Like we were just talking earlier about websites, like how do we switch over from one domain to another domain registrar? Who knows? Yeah. So it's like, yeah, I think you can have a lot of different mentors, both formal and informal and I don't know that one is better than the other. I guess my big take home point is like, let's not be afraid to ask. My experience has been, for the most part, people wanna help.

Allyson Wharam: Yeah.

Becky Eldridge: Like whether they're your mentor or not, or whether they're getting paid for it or not, they wanna help. Like at the end of the day, they wanna help. And so, I guess my lesson that I would hope people would leave here today with is like, [00:37:00] it doesn't hurt to ask.

Allyson Wharam: Mm-hmm.

Becky Eldridge: You know, the number of times that I ask and I get surprised about something just always tells me, like, keep asking.

Like, Allyson and I are in a group with other BCBA entrepreneurs and some of us do book clubs and it was like, oh, can we ask the author to come and do a Q and A with our book club? What would they say? And it was like, let's just ask. And those, the two of us that have just asked random authors, we don't know these people.

Becky Eldridge: They both said yes. Yeah. To doing Q and As and it's like, why didn't I just ask? Like I was so nervous 'cause this person, I put them on a pedestal. And that is something that my mentor, Stephanie Peterson, my formal mentor, has always said to me is people are people are people. Like,

Allyson Wharam: mm-hmm.

Becky Eldridge: Yeah. We're all, people just ask, the worst they can say is no.

And in general, when they say no, they'll [00:38:00] generally say like, I don't have time right now. I would love to like, it's not for like, oh, I don't wanna do your Q and A.

Allyson Wharam: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Becky Eldridge: Because if someone took the time to write a book, which is a strenuous process, they want it to get out.

Allyson Wharam: Yeah.

Becky Eldridge: And they care about the topic and they want you to know about it.

Allyson Wharam: Yeah, I mean, same thing with researchers. I've been continuously struck by that as well, just how generous people are and that yeah, people are, people, like, you know, you might see someone from afar at conferences and they're doing CEUs, and you know, you might see them on social media and it's easy to forget that they're just a person.

They're just a person. So that's a good reminder.

Becky Eldridge: Yeah. I will say probably the other difference between formal and informal. I feel like formal you have a dedicated time.

Allyson Wharam: Yeah

Becky Eldridge: with that person. So like, when I have formal mentorship agreements with people, they are paying me to mentor them [00:39:00] because it is my job, it's my livelihood.

And so, we have a set guaranteed time. I will be a hundred percent with you to help you through this issue. I will respond to your emails, between our meetings. I, you know, will find things, articles to send to you. That is my role. In an informal, I guess I sometimes also think of that as more like, if I have the time to do it, I want to do it, I want to help you.

Or it's gonna be just a quick like, hey, I'll send you this, or I'll you know, I'm going down to practice in the auditorium. Do you want to come with me? Mm-hmm. I'm not necessarily like arranging that ahead of time and gonna skip my, you know, networking dinner to go help you with this versus like, having that set aside time.

The peer thing, I think a lot, like I have so many friends that I consider mentors. Like you, like, um, [00:40:00] think about all my grad school buddies, like

Allyson Wharam: mm-hmm.

Becky Eldridge: I call them up and I'm like, what do I do in the situation? They call me up, you know?

Allyson Wharam: Yeah.

Becky Eldridge: But again, it's not that.

Allyson Wharam: Yeah. The reciprocal nature too, like as you said.

Becky Eldridge: Yeah.

Allyson Wharam: Yeah. I think it often is reciprocal like that.

Becky Eldridge: A hundred percent. So yeah, peers can absolutely be mentors and I feel like a lot of people call 'em like their workplace bestie, like

Allyson Wharam: mm-hmm. Yeah.

Becky Eldridge: You know,

Allyson Wharam: work wife,

Becky Eldridge: work wife, workplace bestie, like your workplace bestie is gonna tell you you gotta get outta here. It's toxic.

Allyson Wharam: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Becky Eldridge: You know?

Allyson Wharam: Yeah.

Becky Eldridge: Things like that.

Allyson Wharam: Yeah. One other thing that I've been thinking about through this is kind of a big shift from, or segue from what we've been talking about, but I don't wanna forget to talk about it because I do wonder about this. But the just initial connections to mentors. You know, you mentioned how the field has evolved.

It was one of the first things that you mentioned in terms of [00:41:00] organizations, organizational size. We're serving so many more clients or so many more BCBAs. We're a young field, all of that. And part of that is organizational structure has changed and evolved, and we have much bigger organizations in general now.

And I'm thinking a lot about the grad school component and what grad school looked like for, you know, someone who was working towards their BCBA in 2009. Their experience likely looked very, very different from someone who, depending on the program, is working towards their certification now.

And I don't wanna blame it on online program. I'll talk about the, the nuances there because especially as an instructional designer, I think people think being online is the inherent differentiator. It's not being online that's the inherent differentiator. It's when you have 600 people in a program, without clear mechanisms for setting up that infrastructure for mentorship.

[00:42:00] You know, that's what makes it different. It's not the modality, although there are constraints, obviously, that are inherent in certain modalities and things that make a certain modality. Um, we call 'em affordances, but basically like the things that make that modality nice, like being online, you have accessibility.

You can connect with mentors that are all around the world and not necessarily right there, or professors or, you know, whatever. But I guess my point is when you look at the evolution of the field, I'm curious what you've seen in terms of like the mentorship infrastructure that's built in from day one of a grad student's career.

Becky Eldridge: Yeah. I don't know if I've ever told you this. I did my program online at

Allyson Wharam: Oh, really?

Becky Eldridge: FIT.

Allyson Wharam: Okay, well, yes, they're kind of the OG. What year was that?

Becky Eldridge: In 2007 to 2009.

Allyson Wharam: Okay.

Becky Eldridge: I got my master's from University of Chicago in 2007 in disability studies. [00:43:00] And at that time I was working for CARD, which is a large organization, Center for Autism and Related Disorders in Chicago.

And wanted to be a BCBA and moved back to Phoenix. Started working at a special needs school in Phoenix that had three BCBAs working there. And three BCBAs who had gone to Utah State had worked at Marcus Autism Center and like some well-known places and Kennedy Krieger.

And then one of the BCBAs got her master's at Columbia Teachers College with Doug Greer and did the CABAS program. So I had a unique experience in that I had this online program, and this is when Jose Martinez-Diaz was still teaching live courses. Live meaning a lot of our video recordings were a recording of him teaching a class.

Becky Eldridge: Like you could see heads and hands raised.

Allyson Wharam: Oh, interesting.

Becky Eldridge: So the camera's, like at the [00:44:00] back of the, you know, FITs classroom. They would zoom in on him and then it would go to someone who asked a question. So it's like before Zoom. So I had a unique experience in that FIT's program was set up in that we had small groups and I don't know if they still do that, but we had like five or six students that would meet.

So we would watch the lectures and then we would go to our small group live. And there was like five or six students and it was run by a, either a master's or PhD person. And so

Allyson Wharam: Was it live in terms of like cameras on you're talking to each other live or?

Becky Eldridge: I can't remember if we had cameras on or if we just were on the chat bar and the main person was on live.

I remember seeing his face. I don't remember seeing, like I had Tom Freeman one time, I had Corey Robertson. Like every semester it would change who you had.

Allyson Wharam: The reason I ask is I also went to FIT [00:45:00] and I was wondering how much had changed in those years. Because it was recorded lectures and then we did have like a co-instructor, a small group.

But it, it was very, I, I learned so much in that program, but it was very impersonal in terms of the closeness with the co-instructors and the actual kind of like opportunity. It was kind of reviewing the material.

Becky Eldridge: It was reviewing the material. Ours, I would say we were closer, like one day, it was my birthday during our class, and, um, I'm forgetting his name.

He spoke Dutch and he sang happy birthday to me

Allyson Wharam: Oh. That's fun.

Becky Eldridge: in Dutch, but like, we would message each other outside of the

Allyson Wharam: Oh, interesting.

Becky Eldridge: group. But I don't know if that was just our group.

Allyson Wharam: Yeah.

Becky Eldridge: There were certainly co-instructors that you liked better than others. Like you would really try and get in their slots.

Like [00:46:00] there were some that just literally would review a modified PowerPoint of whatever the

Allyson Wharam: mm-hmm.

Becky Eldridge: lecture was. But what I was gonna say with that, this was a sign of the times though, like when I became board certified in 2009, and this is not me trying to toot my horn. It is just, I want people to have an understanding of the difference between now and then.

Allyson Wharam: Mm-hmm.

Becky Eldridge: I was the 36th BCBA in the state of Arizona.

Allyson Wharam: Mm-hmm.

Becky Eldridge: So there were only 35 other people, and at that time we were trying to get insurance legislation passed so that ABA could be covered by insurance.

And so all 35 of us were in regular communication. And we were all talking to each other and we ended up starting AzABA, which is the Arizona Association

Allyson Wharam: mm-hmm.

Becky Eldridge: For Behavior Analysts. And we were all connected because we all had a skin in the game. Like some of us worked at schools, some of us worked at clinics. There was a BCBA up in Flagstaff [00:47:00] that worked in a hospital for the Institute for Human Development up there. And so we all wanted the law to be written in a certain way so that we could continue to serve clients.

So first we got the autism legislation passed, then we got licensure passed, and we all worked together very closely. And so when we started AzABA, I would say like mentorship for me blossomed to outside of just the three people at my organization to now there's 35 other people that all do things differently.

Allyson Wharam: Mm-hmm.

Becky Eldridge: You know, back in 2009, things were run very differently and everyone had kind of come in from different places and trained in different ways. And so I had a lot more. Before we started AzABA, we would just go to the Four Corners Association for Behavior Analysis, which was our regional one, [00:48:00] which four corners is Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah.

But like Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah didn't have the same things that we had going on in Arizona, so it wasn't really, even though we would go to that conference every year and meet people, the legislative issues were different. So for someone doing an online program, I think to find a mentor at your agency, you're just gonna get a snapshot of one.

And when you talk about like someone's giving you a shortcut to learning opportunities, get involved in your local

Allyson Wharam: mm-hmm.

Becky Eldridge: association, because that's where you can also meet mentors and you can find out how different places do things and you get a shortcut to that learning without having to jump between organization, organization, organization.

So, I know when I was in AzABA, we were trying to do different like social events throughout the month. It has exploded. It's a huge association now, and they do a lot of different things. They have a lot of different [00:49:00] committees that work toward different goals within their mission.

And a lot of different states do that too. So I would just say like if you're doing an online program, you are gonna miss out on some in-person mentorship. Like, yeah, I met with this group of five or six people once a week, but I can't even remember if our cameras were on, so they were probably off and we were chatting in the chat bar and emailing.

Allyson Wharam: I remember one class, I was like, physically ill, and I was like, none of these people know this. Like, I'm like laying down on my couch right now ill and no one knows that. Like, that's how, just like disconnected it was. Yeah. Like I'm still just gonna participate in the chat and do what I need to do.

But again, not that it's the modality, but I juxtapose it to my master's was online in Instructional Design and just how different that experience like, I happened to live in Charlottesville where you know, it was through UVA and so, I still ended [00:50:00] up at like my professor's house. I think about that for undergrad too, being in a research lab and things like that and just the degree of, yeah, there's physical proximity, but it also was like the type of relationship where that is a possibility. I think is the difference. Or you know, I have this problem that came up and I can actually go and talk, you know, I would even think to talk to you about that.

Becky Eldridge: Yeah.

Allyson Wharam: And not that, that can't happen even with that like co-instructor. It could but it's not designed for that. I would say it's probably, more exception than the rule.

Becky Eldridge: I don't think that I got mentorship from the online program. I definitely got that from the three BCBAs at my school and then the community in Arizona.

But yeah, when I went in person to Western Michigan University, it's built in like

Allyson Wharam: mm-hmm.

Becky Eldridge: You have a chair in the lab with your name on it.

Allyson Wharam: Yeah.

Becky Eldridge: And people are like, hey, are you gonna be in the lab later? Like it's just part of the culture. You go into your classes and then you're [00:51:00] gonna do your homework in the lab and some of your lab mates are gonna be in your classes.

So you're gonna do your homework together and you're gonna study together and you're working at the same practicum sites together. And so you are, you're experiencing those things together to where you could have a lot of peer mentorship. And I had that in both places, but definitely when I was doing the online program, I had to facilitate those.

And I don't think I would've labeled it as doing that at the time. My mentor in Arizona, my formal mentor, well, you know, there's things like the conference that I didn't feel very mentored in. He said, you're doing a talk at the conference.

Allyson Wharam: Mm, mm-hmm.

Becky Eldridge: Like, so there was that like, push, I wouldn't have just signed up to do one.

Allyson Wharam: Yeah.

Becky Eldridge: Like he was like, we're going to this and you're gonna talk on this client. And I was like, oh, okay.

Allyson Wharam: Yeah.

Becky Eldridge: And maybe that was a sponsorship opportunity or a push towards that, but I think [00:52:00] that for people now in programs with 600 people and they're working at an agency with 600 locations, my advice would be go to your state chapter.

Go to the social event, meet some people, go to your state conference, go to the poster session, that's where you're gonna meet people.

Allyson Wharam: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Becky Eldridge: And just ask questions. And people are just people, but you have to, you do have to make a little bit of an effort to put yourself out out there.

Allyson Wharam: And make a connection too, first, you know, you're not cold reaching out to someone you've never met and just saying, hey, will you be my mentor?

Becky Eldridge: There's been times that my mentor, Stephanie Peterson, i'll share some personal anecdotes, if that's okay.

Allyson Wharam: Yeah.

Becky Eldridge: She went to grad school with, um, she was in Dave Wacker's lab. Her grad school bestie was Jen McComas, who's at Minnesota.

And Jen McComas does [00:53:00] a lot of work with individuals with RETT syndrome, teaching communication through eye gaze devices, using telehealth with girls with RETT syndrome. And she also does a lot with DEI. And she's just a, a wonderful person. Stephanie introduced us at a conference and, you know, Jen's a really nice human and I kind of just hit it off with her and we were chatting and come to find out that she has kids that are adopted, and I was looking into adoption, so I emailed her and was like, hey, can I chat with you about this?

And she was like, absolutely. I would've never had that opportunity to talk to someone about a personal life mentorship moment had I not, you know, made that connection at a conference. So it's not just like work stuff, it's also just like life stuff.

Allyson Wharam: Life, yeah.

Becky Eldridge: Like how do you balance being a mom? Uh, you know,

Allyson Wharam: yeah.

Becky Eldridge: You know, leader in the field, doing your research. [00:54:00] Now you're pursuing this other thing. Um, what would you do differently? Like, you know, so I, I just think like those instances too, you just, you meet people and you end up like finding out different things and you just I guess I would just say like, you'll never know what people could surprise you with in terms of mentorship.

With different life things that come up if you don't talk to people. So the biggest thing is like, rip off the bandaid.

Allyson Wharam: Mm-hmm.

Becky Eldridge: Fine. My grad school friends call me their emotional support extrovert. So, so find your emotional support extrovert and get out there at a conference like

Allyson Wharam: Yeah.

Becky Eldridge: And meet people. Because that's really how you find who you, you know, wanna seek counsel from.

Allyson Wharam: Yeah, I think that's a great note to leave it on. I hope that this was helpful for anyone who's thinking about mentorship. I think sometimes it's one of those [00:55:00] things that like just kind of happen, like if you're not intentional, it might happen in these informal ways.

And when you are really thinking about it, you can create some really great opportunities to just connect with people as people and learn from them. So thanks for being here, Becky.

Becky Eldridge: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks Allyson.