We treat communication like a soft skill. Or worse, like something you are simply born with. You either have it or you do not, end of story. And then we watch teams come apart one ignored conversation at a time. The RBT who stops showing up because she asked for a schedule change three times and no one answered. The BCBA who quits because nobody told her what was going on. The clinical disagreement that turned personal because the resentment sat and bubbled for months.

My guest today is bringing her keynote to ABA C.A.R.E.S., and she is back by popular demand. Damona Hoffman is a TV casting director turned relationship and communication expert. She is the official relationship expert on The Drew Barrymore Show, a regular on NPR and Access Daily, a columnist for the LA Times and the Washington Post, and the bestselling author of F the Fairy Tale. She has spent two decades studying how people actually communicate, in Hollywood casting rooms, in the early days of online dating, and inside the data of apps used by millions. Her keynote is called Empathetic Leadership and Courageous Conversations.

Here is what we get into:

• Why communication is a skill you can build, not a personality trait you are stuck with.
• What happens when you step into leadership but keep wearing the clothes of your old role, and why your team now hears you differently than you mean it.
• How the move to screens stripped the context out of how we talk, and left all of us more self-conscious and less connected.
• The always-on trap. Why your 10 p.m. email lands like an emergency, and the small guardrails that fix it.
• Building a communication code for your team across generations, cultures, and the Slack-versus-Teams of it all, so a single emoji does not start a cold war.
• The most empathetic thing a leader can do, which turns out to be plain clarity, and how it ties straight to retention.
• AI and authenticity. Why leaning on it for the words is one thing, but admitting you did, right now, can quietly cost you trust.
• Replacing assumption with articulation, and avoidance with accountability, instead of the block-and-delete reflex.

One thing to know before Boston. Damona's keynote is not a sit-back-and-take-notes talk. It is interactive, closer to improv, the kind where you get in the sandbox and practice the tools in the room. So come ready to play.

A few places to find more of her work:

Website: https://damonahoffman.com

Her book, F the Fairy Tale: https://damonahoffman.com/f-the-fairy-tale/

Her podcast, Dates & Mates: https://damonahoffman.com

Damona is returning to ABA C.A.R.E.S. by popular demand to deliver her keynote, Empathetic Leadership and Courageous Conversations, in Boston this August. Register here: https://behaviorlive.com/conferences/abacares2026/registration

We will see you in Boston August 4th through 7th, or live streaming from the other side of the screen.

Most ABA training is not really training. It is compliance theater. Staff click through the modules, pass the quizzes, get signed off as competent, and six weeks later they are standing in front of a real client, in a real moment, with no idea what to do. We did not skip the training. We did plenty of it. It just never taught anyone how to do the job.

My guests today are two of the most respected voices in the field on exactly this problem. Dr. Alison Betz is VP of Business Development at ABA Technologies and the current executive director of the OBM Network. Adam Hockman is their senior vice president of Learning Partnerships and Growth, an instructional designer who will happily tell you that ABA Technologies is not a plug-and-play training company. They are presenting a session at the Summit called From Training to Results, and this is the episode to listen to with your notes app open.

Here is what we get into:

• What plug-and-play training really is, and why a 40-hour checkbox bolted onto an already bloated onboarding produces content coverage, not competence.
• Why instructional design is a discipline of its own, and why being brilliant at teaching kids does not automatically make you good at teaching adults.
• The sequencing trap. Why the skills a new technician needs on day one, like pairing and building rapport, tend to show up last in their training.
• Why you do not have to choose between exam pass rates and real readiness. A well-built program can deliver both, often in less time.
• How to actually run the build-versus-buy decision, starting with a number most owners cannot name: what training truly costs you, including the billable hours you lose while people are still in it.
• The measures worth watching. Time to competency, 30, 60, and 90 day turnover, first-session integrity, and the satisfaction surveys behavior analysts tend to wave off.
• One thing you can do before August. Follow a single new hire through onboarding like a researcher, and map exactly where the confusion and the handoffs are.

A few resources from ABA Technologies if you want to go deeper:

Company page: https://www.abatechnologies.com

RBT Cost Calculator, to put a real number on what training is costing you: https://www.abatechnologies.com/corporate/cost-calculator

The ABA Tech Clinical Leaders Community: https://www.abatechnologies.com/corporate/the-aba-tech-clinical-leaders-community

Alison and Adam will be on stage at ABA C.A.R.E.S. for their session, From Training to Results, and they will have a booth right when you walk in, to the left. Adam's advice for getting the most from the Summit: come with two or three real problems you are trying to solve, not just one, and be willing to look underneath them, because training is often the hidden factor behind a turnover or compliance problem.

Register here: https://behaviorlive.com/conferences/abacares2026/registration

We will see you in Boston August 4th through 7th, or live streaming from the other side of the screen.

Months after a session is finished and paid, a payer can reach back and take the money for it. Sometimes over something as small as a missing signature, or a note that never quite said what the session was for. Nobody in ABA wants to spend their day on documentation. Clinicians dread it, owners worry about it, and QA teams are drowning in notes they could never fully read. And all the while, that paperwork quietly decides whether you keep the reimbursement, and sometimes whether a clinician keeps their job.

My guest today is Mitchell Mom, head of product at Brellium, an AI compliance platform that audits session notes against payer, regulatory, and quality requirements. Mitchell says they have reviewed close to seven million ABA session notes, which gives them a clear view of where documentation tends to break down and what it costs a practice when it does.

Here is what we get into:

• Why no team can manually review more than a fraction of its notes, and what changes when you can check all of them instead of spot-checking.
• The patterns that show up again and again. Notes that do not tie clearly to ABA, sessions that look double-billed, and signatures that do not line up with the actual session time.
• Why the same note can pass in one state or with one payer and fail with another, and how to think about a moving target.
• How to coach clinicians without the gotcha. A six-month trend lands better than catching one note from last Tuesday.
• The link between specific notes and better care. "Mastered X with 80 percent accuracy across three trials" tells a story. "Client did great today" tells you nothing.
• Why good documentation can even help keep families in care, because parents can finally see the progress for themselves.
• Moving from reactive to proactive, and treating documentation as protection before an audit instead of a scramble after one.
• A fair reminder that a documentation error is not always fraud. Sometimes a good clinician simply forgot to sign once.

One thing Mitchell is careful about. Brellium is not there to second-guess clinical judgment or replace your QA team. It handles the consistency at scale that no tired human can, and flags the few notes that actually need a real set of eyes, so your people can spend their judgment where it counts. The goal is never to tell a clinician they failed. It is to point out the few things worth fixing, and show them how.

Learn more about Brellium at https://www.brellium.com

This is Brellium's first time at ABA C.A.R.E.S., and they will have a booth in Boston this August. If documentation is eating your QA team alive, or you keep getting flagged and are not sure why, that is exactly the conversation to have with them. Register here: https://behaviorlive.com/conferences/abacares2026/registration

We will see you in Boston August 4th through 7th, or live streaming from the other side of the screen.