Failure, Fear, and the Myth of “Becoming” an OBMer
I’ve been sitting with a quote from Michelle Obama’s Becoming:
“Failure is a feeling long before it becomes an actual result. It’s vulnerability that breeds with self-doubt and then is escalated, often deliberately, by fear.”
In Organizational Behavior Management (OBM), we talk a lot about performance outcomes:
Metrics
Systems
Implementation fidelity
Return on investment
In my experience, failure in this field rarely starts with poor data. It starts long before, with fear.
Failure is an Antecedent Condition, Not Just an Outcome
Before someone “fails” in OBM, there is usually:
Fear of leaving a stable role
Fear of not being taken seriously outside of clinical work
Fear of not knowing enough about business
Fear of charging or paying for mentorship or supervision
Fear of being the least experienced person in the room
By the time someone decides that OBM “isn’t for them,” the failure has already been internally rehearsed. Here is the part we don’t say out loud enough: our field doesn’t always build environments that make courage easier.
In “Why Evidence Alone Doesn’t Change Systems”, I wrote about how data is insufficient without aligned contingencies. The same is true for professional growth. You can read every OBM article ever published, but if the environment punishes vulnerability or doesn’t provide meaningful mentorship, fear wins.
Psychological safety may have been named in organizational psychology (Edmondson, 1999), but behavior analysts have been studying its mechanisms for decades. OBM research on social contingencies and metacontingencies shows how workplace cultures either reinforce risk-taking and learning or inadvertently punish it (Glenn, 2004 & Glenn & Malott, 2004). Across frameworks, the message is the same: innovation requires environments where people can take interpersonal risks. Yet, many emerging OBM professionals navigate their career pivots without that safety built in.
When environments punish vulnerability, people narrow their behavior. They aim for what feels safe. Fear shapes how professionals think about their own growth. If we know that learning requires environments where interpersonal risk is safe, then we have to ask a harder question: What does that look like for aspiring OBM professionals?
For many professionals looking to make a switch into OBM, the absence of a clear pathway doesn’t feel like an opportunity. It feels like a risk. The types of messages that I have received make that clear:
I want to expand beyond autism services and develop OBM skills. Are there internships, shadowing, or entry-level OBM roles I can pursue?
I’m a BCBA working primarily in autism and training. Is there an online certificate program that would allow me to transition into OBM?
Is there a certification that would make me qualified to do OBM work?
Do I need another degree to transition into OBM?
Would completing an OBM certificate be enough to start consulting?
What kind of projects would actually count as OBM experience?
Where do I even start if I’ve never worked outside clinical services?
What these types of questions have in common is not a lack of motivation, but they show an assumption about OBM work. The assumption that OBM is:
External consulting or a consulting niche instead of a systems discipline
A professional identity you “earn” rather than a repertoire you build
A credential that confers competence instead of competence demonstrated over time
A destination rather than an ongoing expansion of fluency
Something you “switch into” rather than something you shape gradually
A rebrand rather than a behavioral shift
The best (and most difficult) way to gain this knowledge is through a formal university program, but there isn’t a certification that makes you an “OBMer.”
There is no weekend credential. No three-month rebrand. No designation that instantly shifts your professional identity. This is often where fear enters. Without a defined pathway, the transition feels ambiguous and ambiguity is uncomfortable.
OBM is Not a Job. It’s a Repertoire
You will not be successful searching for jobs in OBM, because it is not a job title or category. It is a repertoire. It is the ability to analyse performance systems, design contingencies, align values with measurable behavior, and to build infrastructure that reinforce what matters.
This repertoire can be shaped within clinical organizations, startups, the healthcare system, universities, and in the business world. You don’t wake up one day and become an OBM professional. You expand your behavioral fluency over time, through supervised experiences, professional development courses, systems work, professional mentorship, and deliberate practice.
But…..
Expansion requires risk, which brings us back to fear.
Becoming is Not a Credential
If fear is reinforced, avoidance expands. If vulnerability is reinforced, growth expands. That’s not inspirational language. That is contingency design.
No one arrives fully formed. Not leaders, not organizations, not OBM professionals. We don’t become something once and for all. Because becoming isn’t a credential. Becoming is a pattern of behavior that is reinforced over time.
The question is whether we are arranging environments, in our organizations, in our supervision models, and in our own careers, that reinforce courage more than avoidance. When we design our environments to make vulnerability safer than avoidance, learning accelerates. When experimentation is reinforced, repertoires expand. When avoidance is no longer the most efficient response, failure becomes less likely.
That’s not just professional development. That is systems work.
References
Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383. https://doi.org/10.2307/2666999
Glenn, S. S. (2004). Organizational behavior management and systems of behavioral contingencies: Shifting the focus. The Behavior Analyst, 27(2), 253–268.
Glenn, S. S., & Malott, M. E. (2004). Behavior analysis and the contingent properties of culture. The Behavior Analyst, 27(2), 193–206.