- Understand what constitutes effective leadership
- Appreciate the impact of effective leadership
- Recognize and evaluate executive talent
- Develop executive talent with a focus on leadership
- Establish patterns of accountability in which leadership flourishes
Our Vision
Generate personal and organizational improvement by maximizing effective leadership.
Our Mission
Our Core Beliefs
- All business problems are leadership problems- lack of effective leadership is the primary constraint to growth
- Personal responsibility and ownership need to be fostered
- Vulnerability and humility are fundamental leadership traits
- Leaders must actively learn and actively teach
- A leader’s most precious resource is their attention
- Leaders must lead
Behind the Name
There are no "training wheels" at executive levels
Failure is an excellent teacher- when we listen to it. It takes years of successes and failures to get to executive levels, and the learnings don’t stop there. Instead, the falls get more costly, and the pain spreads to others. We must learn from our mistakes as efficiently as possible.
Many organizations have “training wheels” to get people to higher levels, but then they have to come off to go faster and be more nimble. At executive levels there is little tolerance for failure, and support mechanisms previously available may disappear entirely.
However, it is possible to construct our own invisible set of “training wheels” to help us learn from mistakes while avoiding costly falls. This guidance comes from our peers, our network, our introspection, and even our own employees when we invest our efforts properly.
There’s no good way to lead others without taking on additional risk; leadership requires courage. Executive Training Wheels exists for those who understand and rise to that challenge. If you share the humility or humor to don some virtual “training wheels” in your quest for executive effectiveness, we can help each other make the business world a better and more productive place.
Welcome, I'm Doug Bennett
My background is common. Growing up middle class in a small town in the rust belt, I had to wait for mom’s next paycheck to get a graphing calculator for math class. There was limited business experience in my family, and I was a first-generation college student. My wife and I lived check to check off her $10/hr job through graduate school.
Over the next 10 years of my career, I was astonished by the stark lack of business and career coaching for anyone not already steeped in it by family tradition. When I first got into business and finance, I had almost no professional network. Now that I’ve worked my way from the ground up to hold multiple VP positions at a multi-billion dollar global company, I want to help others climb those steps.
Though my background is common, it’s relatively rare among executives. I founded Executive Training Wheels to close that gap and to improve the overall level of leadership in the business world.
Executive Coach
Leaders Promoted
Added Value
Why we are Here
Executive talent is rare and incredibly valuable. In fact, it is the primary element that will make or break an organization. Organizations can’t afford for many abilities to be learned on the fly in top roles. As a result, constantly developing and evaluating executive talent is critical for any organization. The quickest, most accurate, and very oversimplified way to define executive talent is simply as leadership.
There are many books, articles, authors, and speakers on leadership. Many of these focus specifically on executive leadership. Unfortunately, some of the most insightful and useful gems are only hinted at and left under-explored. Worse, when combining multiple sources, published executive leadership advice as a whole can even be contradictory. There is untapped value in more dynamic frameworks that tie different approaches together, illuminating which elements should apply in which situations. This is possible without completely losing the plot and saying “we know executive leadership when we see it.”
There are countless attempts at grand unified theories of leadership. This is not one of them. When it comes to leadership there are endless angles or methods to learn about. Our approach is to review and evaluate many of those to draw new connections and insights. Adding in personal thoughts and examples or counterexamples is helpful. From there, the real value comes from examining different theories of leadership in light of each other and seeing what new combinations arise.
The focus of existing sources on executive talent is usually specific to those who are already executives, or even more limited to just CEOs. Those a short step away from executive levels get much less attention outside of in-house training programs. Meanwhile, MBA programs and even EMBA programs tend to fall well short of executive-level leadership coaching. This leaves some large gaps for us to fill.
A great leader seeks for their team to learn rapidly from one another’s mistakes. Likewise, this site exists to scale out lessons on leadership and improve executive capabilities as widely as possible.
Who can Benefit
Anyone exercising or affected by high-level leadership
Current Executives
Executives who want to build and maintain high-performing teams, and who want to add greater value through leadership.
Aspiring Executives
Those at any level who want to climb the corporate ladder by adding value.
Evaluators
Board members, business partners, and anyone hiring for executive roles. This also applies to candidates evaluating potential peers or supervisors.