Training supervisor perspective-taking abilities to enhance compassionate practices toward supervisees and stakeholders

Competency-based training protocols have long been recommended for developing supervisors in Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), with most literature emphasizing procedural skills. However, rapid growth in the practitioner base and concerns regarding training quality and service outcomes have increased attention to “soft” skills, including compassion. From a behavior analytic perspective, compassion may involve identifying aversive functional relations, perspective taking, and deriving appropriate action. Although compassionate practice has demonstrated benefits for practitioners and clients, research has largely focused on clinician-client interactions rather than extending these practices to supervisees, caregivers and interdisciplinary providers. The present study operationalized four perspective taking and compassionate action skills (context, impact, meaning, and action) and evaluated an asynchronous behavioral skills training (BST) protocol for current and prospective supervisors. Using a non-concurrent multiple probe design across seven participants, participants were assessed on identifying barriers and generating compassionate actions in contrived workplace scenarios. All participants improved following training though generalization varied. Limitations and future research directions are discussed.