Reframe Fix | The Official Workbench Podcast

What does it take to lead from the top without losing yourself? In this episode of Reframe Fix, host Jake Smith sits down with Darius Wise, president and CEO of Red Rocks Credit Union and a former pastor, for a candid conversation about saying no, leading authentically, and building a company culture people want to be part of.

Darius spent 17 years as a pastor, where saying yes was the job. Stepping into the CEO seat three years ago meant learning to say no. He shares the four leadership prompts he answers every Monday, why he believes there’s a healthy kind of selfishness in leadership, and why he still calls himself a recovering people pleaser and workaholic.

In this conversation:

• The four weekly questions Darius asks himself, including “What can I say no to so I can say yes to what matters?”

• How to show up as an authentic leader: caring, accountable, enthusiastic, and gritty

• Why unresolved trauma can get in the way of great leadership, and how counseling changed the way he leads

• The health wake-up call behind losing 60 pounds in 18 months, and how sleep, recovery, and routines changed how he shows up for his team and family

• Why he believes a CEO’s primary job is creating clarity, and how vision, alignment, and execution depend on it

• How he rebuilt strategy around employer of choice, top-quartile NPS, and growth after inheriting two years of net losses

• How far ahead a CEO should really look in a fast-moving market

Whether you’re a CEO, founder, or executive leading through a growth cycle, you’ll take away practical ideas on time management, executive leadership, self-care, and building a high-performing team.

Reframe Fix is a podcast from Workbench featuring candid conversations with CEOs and founders about building, leading, and growing companies. Hosted by Jake Smith.

Authentic leadership starts with knowing who you are — and offering that person, not a performance.

In this episode of Reframe Fix, Jake Smith sits down with Cari Jenkins, CEO of The Tove Group and founder of The Host and the Guest, for a conversation on leadership identity, alignment, and the overlooked power of hospitality in how we lead teams.

Cari has spent her career helping executives and teams find congruence between who they are and how they lead — work that spans executive coaching, culture strategy, and "identity intensives" for CEOs and leaders. She and Jake unpack the difference between performing leadership and offering it, why "leading for identity" makes leaders fragile, and how strategic hospitality can reorient a team, a client relationship, or a single staff meeting.

In this episode:

• Why authentic leadership requires alignment, not performance

• The difference between leading from identity and leading for identity

• How "story work" helps leaders and teams discover their true values

• What hospitality really means in a leadership and workplace culture context

• How small, intentional gestures build trust and belonging on a team

Connect with Cari Jenkins on LinkedIn or at thehostandtheguest.com.

Reframe Fix is a podcast from Workbench — real conversations about leadership, the stories behind the scenes, and what it takes to go from stuck to scaling. Learn more at workbench.co.

PowerPlacing CEO James Harper joins Jake Smith for a candid conversation about what it really takes to lead — starting with yourself. James breaks down why "leaders eat last" is more than a cliché, how imposter syndrome and ego get in the way of authentic leadership, and why he'd rather build a team through Return on Opportunity and Return on Time than chase ROI alone. They dig into congruence between who you are at work and at home, why core values only matter when you actually embody them, and why you don't have to win every fight — you just have to show up for it.

If you're a business owner or executive wrestling with authenticity, ego, or what it means to lead people well, this one's for you.

What actually separates leadership from management? Jon Mell has spent his career leading teams through layoffs, transformations, and high-stakes calls, and he's convinced there's no one-size-fits-all playbook for doing it well.

In this episode of Reframe Fix, host Jake Smith and Jon dig into the hardest parts of leading people: making tough redundancy decisions, holding onto optimism without ignoring reality, and knowing when ego helps a leader versus when it gets in the way. They unpack why leadership lives in the "gray," the twenty percent no process can cover, and why authenticity, not imitation, is what actually earns a team's trust.

A candid, insight-driven conversation for any CEO, founder, or executive leading through uncertainty.

In Part 2 of this conversation, Jake Smith continues talking with Michael Cusick — founder, therapist, author, speaker, and coach — about the false self leaders build to feel safe, and what it costs them.

They unpack how shame disconnects us from ourselves, from others, and from a larger sense of purpose, why it pushes leaders to either inflate or shrink, and why no amount of success, money, or title can satisfy the deeper need to be truly known. Jake opens up about his own story of hitting a breaking point, facing the shame he had buried, and finding unexpected acceptance on the other side of vulnerability.

A candid look at what self-awareness and self-regulation really demand from the leaders willing to do the work.

(Missed Part 1? Start there for the full conversation on vulnerability and authority.)

What if the biggest thing holding you back as a leader isn't your strategy — it's the story you tell yourself?

In this episode of Reframe Fix, host Jake Smith sits down with therapist, coach, and author Michael Cusick for a candid conversation about the inner work behind great leadership. Drawing on more than 30 years as a therapist and spiritual director, Michael unpacks why self-awareness and self-regulation — not willpower or tactics — separate leaders who thrive from those who stall.

Together they explore the difference between authority and vulnerability, how our nervous system and built-in "negativity bias" quietly run the show, why shame creates distance and feeds the "false self," and what it really takes to show up present, congruent, and fully human. Jake also shares his own story of facing deep shame and finding freedom on the other side of it.

A grounded, honest look at the parts of leadership no strategy deck can fix.

Dan Wolgemuth spent 28 years in corporate life — nine of them at General Electric during the Jack Welch era — before serving 16 years as CEO for a national non-profit organization. What he learned along the way challenges some of the most persistent assumptions about what it means to lead.

In this conversation, Dan and host Jake Smith explore the difference between authority as a right and authority as a stewardship — and why that distinction changes everything. They dig into the tension between care and accountability, what it costs to acquiesce rather than decide, and why the leaders who last often lead from the back of the room.

Dan also reflects on a GE boss who couldn't explain why Dan's approach worked, a defining leadership moment that forced an unpopular call, and two teenage grandsons who turned out to be his most unexpected leadership teachers.

If you lead people — a company, a team, or a family — this one is for you.

Jay Steele is the CEO of Focus Learning, a software company he acquired through a search fund. In this conversation with host Jake Smith, Jay gets honest about the realities of stepping into a company as a first-time CEO — the relief, the pressure, and the hard work of building a culture that lasts.

He covers what "people-first" leadership really means beyond the buzzword, how he approaches high-stakes decisions using a one-way and two-way door framework, why indecision is the one answer he refuses to accept, and the personal complexity of transitioning a long-tenured founder out of the business he built.

Jay also reflects on scaling from a small team to 50-plus people, what he brought from his background as a Naval officer and Amazon leader, and why he believes great work can be both deeply meaningful and genuinely fun — and why those aren't the same thing.

If you're navigating a search fund acquisition, stepping into a CEO role for the first time, or building a leadership style that's both accountable and human, this episode is for you.

Reframe Fix is brought to you by Workbench. Hosted by Jake Smith.

Leadership coaching, role clarity, and the human cost of poor HR decisions — Evelyn Walter has seen it all from inside some of the country's largest organizations.

In this episode of Reframe Fix, host Jake Smith sits down with Evelyn Walter, founder of Next Up Leadership Group and a 27-year veteran of corporate HR, including multiple Chief HR Officer roles. After managing a 1,000-person reduction in force in 2020, Evelyn stepped away from corporate life to build an executive and career coaching practice focused on helping leaders navigate transitions, sharpen their leadership, and find clarity on what comes next.

They cover:

• Why role clarity has become the number one gap in executive coaching conversations right now
• The "people over process" philosophy — what it actually looks like to put it into practice under pressure
• How to lead through layoffs with dignity, and what poor offboarding costs organizations long-term
• Why your boss almost certainly is not trying to make your life harder, and how to manage up effectively
• What a first 360 review reveals about the tension between ambition and humility

Evelyn is direct, experienced, and refreshingly candid about what she has seen work — and what has not — across decades of leading HR at scale.

Reframe Fix is hosted by Jake Smith and brought to you by Workbench — helping CEOs and leadership teams cut through complexity, align their people, and scale with confidence.

In this episode of Reframe Fix, Jake Smith sits down with Galen Welsch — Co-Founder and CEO of Jibu, a drinking water franchise network serving nearly 700,000 people daily across eight countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.Galen has led Jibu for nearly 14 years, scaling the organization to 5,000 employees and 200 franchise locations. In this conversation, he reflects on the full arc of his evolution as a leader — from learning to get things done alone, to learning toactually lead people.They discuss: servant leadership and what genuine influence requires; the two core skills that make delegation work; building an ownership culture through high expectations and real belief in people; why smart, ego-driven employees are more destructive than incompetent ones; how to trust your gut without being misled by it; and where entrepreneurial grit really comes from.A grounded, honest conversation about what leadership looks like when the stakes are real.