The Importance of Hard and Soft Skills in ABA Practice: Session 320 with Tiffany Kodak and Landon Cowan

In Session 320, I sit down with Landon Cowan and Tiffany Kodak to talk about an area of behavior analysis that doesn’t get nearly enough attention: professional (or “soft”) skills.

We spend a lot of time in our field teaching and refining technical, clinical, or “hard” skills—and for good reason. But far less time is devoted to the interpersonal, communication, and problem-solving skills that ultimately determine how effective we are as clinicians, supervisors, and collaborators. In this conversation, Landon and Tiffany share their research aimed at identifying, defining, and measuring these professional skills, along with some eye-opening findings about where skill gaps exist.

🔍 What We Cover in This Episode

• How hard skills differ from professional (soft) skills in behavior analysis

• Why professional skills are so difficult to define, measure, and systematically teach

• How Landon and Tiffany developed a comprehensive professional skills survey for behavior analysts

• The challenges of survey design, including question format, length, readability, and pilot testing

• Results from a survey completed by 189 ABA supervisors, including:

  • Which skills supervisees demonstrate most frequently

  • Which skills supervisors rate as most important for career advancement

  • A significant gap between the importance of problem-solving skills and how often they’re actually demonstrated

• Why solution-based problem identification and independent problem solving emerged as key areas for improvement

• A surprising finding that many supervisors report feeling confident teaching these skills despite identifying major skill deficits

• How Behavioral Skills Training (BST) can be used to effectively teach professional skills

• Why the field needs clearer operational definitions and better data collection to build a stronger literature base

• Practical advice for BCBA trainees and early-career BCBAs around self-assessment, feedback, and ongoing professional development

🎯 Key Takeaways

This episode reinforces something many of us already suspect: professional skills matter—a lot. In many cases, they’re just as important (if not more important) than technical expertise when it comes to supervision, leadership, and long-term success in the field. Developing these skills requires intentional training, honest self-reflection, and a commitment to continuous learning. My hope is that this conversation helps push our field toward doing a better job of teaching, measuring, and valuing the skills that make behavior analysts more effective in the real world.

Resources and Links

• Dr. Kodak's faculty page at Marquette University.

• Dr. Cowan's LinkedIn page.

• Cowan and Kodak (2024). Professional Skills for Behavior Analysts: A Survey on the Proficiency and Importance of Hard and Soft Skills.

• LeBlanc, Taylor, and Marchese (2019). The Training Experiences of Behavior Analysts: Compassionate Care and Therapeutic Relationships with Caregivers.

• Taylor, LeBlanc, and Nosik (2018). Compassionate Care in Behavior Analytic Treatment: Can Outcomes be Enhanced by Attending to Relationships with Caregivers?

• The Stone Soup Conference (use promo code PODCAST26 to save at registration).

• Sommers-Flanagan and Sommers-Flanagan (2023). Clinical Interviewing.

• Carroll, Preas, and Paden (2022). Training supervisors to provide performance feedback using video modeling with voiceover instructions: A replication.

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• The 2026 Stone Soup Conference! This is one of the best values in the online conference space. I'm actually going to be one of the speakers at this year's event, along with a great cast of other characters you're probably familiar with. Save on your registration by using promo code PODCAST26!

• The 2026 Verbal Behavior Conference! Taking place March 26–27, 2026, in Austin, Texas, or livestream and on-demand on BehaviorLive. Presenters will include Drs. Mark Sundberg, Patrick McGreevy, Caio Miguel, Alice Shillingsburg, Sarah Frampton, Andresa De Souza, and Danielle LaFrance will share how Skinner’s analysis of verbal behavior can guide the assessment and treatment of generative learning challenges in children with autism and other developmental disabilities. And don’t miss the special pre-conference workshop on Wednesday, March 25.

• CEUs from Behavioral Observations. Learn from your favorite podcast guests while you're commuting, walking the dog, or whatever else you do while listening to podcasts. New events are being added all the time, so check them out here.