Research and writing
I study leadership as behavior. My research asks whether the skills relational frame theory describes, such as perspective-taking, reasoning about time, and thinking across the levels of a system, help explain why some leaders in human services are more effective than others.
Published
Journal article
Witterschein, R. (2026). What makes leaders in human services effective? A pilot study linking systems thinking, perspective-taking, and leadership success. Journal of Nonprofit Innovation, 6(1), Article 11. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/joni/vol6/iss1/11
The article introduces the ABA Leadership Assessment Tool, Version 2.0 (ABLA 2.0) and reports a pilot with eight Board Certified Behavior Analysts in organizational leadership roles. Leaders who showed greater flexibility in taking others’ perspectives and thinking across organizational levels scored higher on overall leadership effectiveness. The study suggests that leadership development might target that kind of cognitive flexibility, not only management skills. The findings are preliminary and correlational.
Doctoral dissertation
Witterschein, R. M. (2026). Relational frame theory and leadership styles: Examining correlations in applied behavior analysis organizations: A pilot study [Doctoral dissertation, Aspen University].
The dissertation developed the ABLA 2.0 and reported the pilot study behind the article. It is the empirical starting point for my work on leadership and perspective-taking.
The ABLA 2.0
The ABLA 2.0 is a 48-item instrument that joins transformational and transactional leadership frameworks with three constructs from relational frame theory: perspective-taking, temporal reasoning, and systems thinking. It was built for leaders in applied behavior analysis and human-service organizations, where leading well depends on understanding the perspectives of clients, families, and staff and on reasoning across the levels of a program.
It is a pilot-tested instrument, not a validated one. The first sample was small and drawn by convenience, the measures shared a single method, and effectiveness was not checked against independent outcomes. The next step is a larger, more representative study with independent criterion measures and test-retest data. Until then, I describe what the ABLA 2.0 suggests, not what it proves. I wrote more about that in what a study of eight leaders can and cannot tell us.
The Relational Frame Theory of Leadership
The Relational Frame Theory of Leadership (RFTL) is the framework that connects this research to practice. It applies a behavioral account of language and cognition to three questions: how leaders take the perspective of the people they lead, how they reason across the levels of an organization, and how they shape what gets reinforced around them. In practice it becomes training: exercises that build perspective-taking and systems thinking, and supervision that reinforces them on the job.
I am writing an introductory RFTL text intended to be usable by a first-year undergraduate, with the same commitment to plain language and honest evidence that runs through the rest of my work. See how the framework is used in leadership development.
In progress
- An introductory text on the Relational Frame Theory of Leadership.
- Human-Centered Systems Design, a twelve-part text bringing together organizational behavior management, sociotechnical systems, universal design, and relational frame theory.
- A conceptual paper arguing that the core methods of applied behavior analysis put the responsivity principle of the Risk-Need-Responsivity model into practice in forensic behavioral services.
- Further manuscripts from the ABLA 2.0 pilot, and a larger validation study.
Insights
Longer pieces on leadership, organizational behavior management, and behavioral science in practice.
- What a study of eight leaders can and cannot tell us
Notes on the ABLA 2.0 pilot: what it measured, what it found, where its limits are, and what it would take to know more.
Research training
- Protecting Human Research ParticipantsNational Institutes of Health, 2016
- Social, Behavioral, and Education Sciences: Responsible Conduct of ResearchCITI Program, current through May 2027
- Information Privacy and SecurityCITI Program, current through May 2027
My ORCID identifier is 0009-0001-8563-3442.
Podcast
Phase Change is a podcast I am preparing about behavior, leadership, and meaningful change, from the perspective of behavioral science and lived experience. It is coming soon.
Collaborate
If you study leadership, organizational behavior management, or measurement in human services and want to work on the next stage of this research, I would like to hear from you.