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Listen to this week’s podcast episode, Ep.253: Understanding human nature, performance optimization and the Alcohol-Free advantage, with Fred Auzenne, click here to listen now.

In business and management, we often obsess over metrics and measurement. We scrutinize balance sheets, invent KPIs, track targets, monitor conversion rates and build dashboards in search of some ethereal operational ‘clarity’. We demand this data-driven accountability across departments, yet many executives ignore underlying physiological habits that are covertly dragging down our daily judgment. We treat drinking as a harmless ritual or a necessary way to decompress, rarely examining what it actually costs our organisations.

And that’s where this week’s podcast guest steps onto the virtual stage: Fred Auzenne, founder of Clear Edge 90. In my conversation with Fred, we explored evaluating alcohol strictly through the lens of human performance and optimising our organisations/teams. Fred spent a decade in Army counterintelligence, where understanding human behaviour & motivation was crucial to success and (sometimes) survival, before moving into corporate sales in pharmaceuticals and medical devices. Having achieved sobriety forty-four years ago, Fred now coaches senior professionals on how eliminating alcohol unlocks measurable clarity, energy, resilience… and why being alcohol-free can be your competitive advantage.

What I especially liked about Fred’s approach and his manner is the way he talks about alcohol and addiction with none of the typical moralising around sobriety. Instead, he examines the brain science behind self-control, the hidden costs of corporate social pressure, why true leadership begins with the courage to lead yourself before attempting to direct anyone else. And, perhaps most importantly, in his own words: “if I’m coming from true leadership, my true self, then whatever anybody else does, doesn’t matter … if they want to drink, great. If they don’t want to drink, great. It’s their choice, they have their own life to live.“

When leaders dial back unhealthy habits, the default strategy is usually sheer willpower. We promise to skip drinks at an evening event, only to find a glass in hand thirty minutes later, or we promise ourselves ‘just one drink’ and break that promise as soon as someone else offers to buy a round… and it’s usually followed by self-criticism over lacking discipline or not having enough willpower/control/etc.

As Fred explains, attempting to white-knuckle through entrenched habits is where we all misunderstand neuroscience. Your subconscious brain processes information in roughly two hundred milliseconds, firing far faster than conscious logic can intervene. You can’t outrun an automated habit loop with willpower alone because the neurological trigger precedes conscious thought. This is why those trendy, quit-alcohol (or smoking, or whatever else) programs that are based on short-term resets or a ‘thirty-day challenge’ routinely fail; because they temporarily pause consumption without dismantling the underlying conditioning.

More critically, drinking actively undermines biological self-regulation. Studies show consistent alcohol use thins the prefrontal cortex (the brain's executive centre, responsible for logic, strategic planning and emotional control). Drinking regularly will physically weaken the neurological hardware needed for the kind of disciplined, ‘willpower’ choices we all assume we can rely on, in reality creating a loop where depleted executive function makes sticking to intentions increasingly difficult.

Most executives who drink don't fit clinical stereotypes of visible collapse. They aren't missing meetings, they appear successful on paper, yet they operate with a low-grade fog that subtly chips away at daily output and their ability to make effective decisions (in either a work or personal context).

Consider executive stamina: Many managers start clear-headed at nine in the morning, but by mid-afternoon, cognitive fatigue sets in, decision-making slows and evenings become passive recovery time by default. When you drink (even moderately) sleep architecture fractures, stress hormones like cortisol spike and processing speed drops. You might feel fine the next morning, but testing reveals slower reaction times, diminished memory and reduced emotional bandwidth.

There are parallels to a topic we’ve talked about many times before: Burnout. And the combination can be even more damaging, imagine you’re going through burnout but you maybe don’t recognise it, you just feel stressed and tired all the time. So to unwind at the end of a tough day, you have a few beers or share a bottle of wine. But that relaxation device is actually compounding the problem (true story, I’ve been there and done that myself!).

Fred also shared the story of business owners who audited their alcohol-related spending on dinners and parties, uncovering a staggering one hundred and twenty thousand dollars annually. Beyond financial recovery, eliminating that physiological drag freed up surplus capital and energy to build a secondary venture. Removing that tax on your nervous system bridges the gap between operating at seventy percent capacity and working with full presence from morning to evening.

A common excuse for maintaining drinking habits is fear of professional consequences, or being ‘left out’ at work because you’re not ‘fitting in’ with the social convention. In industries built around client dinners and conferences, or the cultural ‘working lunch’, holding a drink feels like an unspoken requirement. Leaders, managers, employees too, worry refusing alcohol makes them look awkward or difficult, sanctimonious, they fear alienating key contacts.

In reality, that pressure is very often an internal projection. Navigating corporate dinners while drinking sparkling water taught Fred that people rarely track your choices because they are too focused on themselves; when you operate with grounded confidence, nobody cares what’s in your glass. If an evening turns into repetitive stories, an observant leader simply steps out without fanfare and their absence most likely won’t be noticed anyway, a practice Fred himself has used throughout his career so far.

Drinking purely to blend in turns managers into social chameleons who react to external expectations rather than internal standards. Authentic leadership requires setting your own baseline, if your stated values center on clarity, strategic focus and endurance (for example), then your daily habits must align with this. Real leadership is compelling precisely because it refuses to compromise personal standards for temporary approval.

In counterintelligence, Fred studied classic motivators of human behavior: money, ideology, coercion, and ego. A primary lesson was that people readily blame external circumstances (e.g. markets, leadership or luck) to escape responsibility.

In leadership, though, external blame in this way is toxic. Attributing stress, habits, bad decisions, poor culture/behaviour or team struggles to outside factors surrenders agency and adopts a victim mindset. As Viktor Frankl observed, there is a space between stimulus and response where your power to choose resides. Two executives can face the exact same market crisis, yet achieve radically different outcomes based on managing that internal focus.

Fred uses a clear metaphor: compare your vehicle’s windshield (or windscreen for our UK readers!) to the tiny rearview mirror. The windshield is enormous because what lies ahead demands attention and momentum; the mirror exists only for brief checks. Too many managers spend careers staring into the rearview mirror, consumed by past missteps and excuses or dwelling on what’s gone wrong, even falling into a negativity spiral (again, I’ve been there!). Leadership demands looking forward, seeing more through the windshield than the rearview, taking complete ownership of present choices, accepting accountability for these and focusing on actions that move the organisation/team forwards.

True leadership doesn’t mean trying to be the smartest person in every room, the first to speak, the one with every answer or decision. In Fred’s counterintelligence experience, for example, relying on personal assumptions without diverse intelligence gets people hurt. The same holds true in business and leadership (although usually with far lower stakes, hopefully!!).

Fred referenced Henry Ford’s observation that he didn't need every technical answer because buttons on his desk summoned specialists who did. Great leadership fosters collective capability, when individuals with distinct operational strengths and diverse perspectives collaborate, their combined output exceeds individual contributions. One plus one becomes three. Or, put another way, a well-led team becomes far more than the sum of its parts.

Building that kind of team environment requires abandoning the demand that everyone think alike. When you model self-discipline, emotional stability, accountability and genuine curiosity, you create psychological safety where people offer candid feedback and their best ideas. Fostering collective intelligence requires showing up with complete clarity yourself, when a leader is exhausted or mentally clouded, they inevitably default to control over collaboration. And that brings us full circle back to what Fred calls the Alcohol-Free Advantage.

Performance optimisation isn't about chasing complicated life hacks or trendy routines, in real life it comes down to identifying unexamined habits that are depleting your cognitive reserves and then having the courage to eliminate them.

Clarity is our greatest operational asset, choosing an uncompromised mind isn't a sacrifice; it’s a profound competitive advantage. By establishing firm personal standards, taking ownership of daily habits, creating environments where diverse talents flourish, you can build a team capable of enduring growth.

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Listen to the full episode at: https://smartlink.ausha.co/leading-with-integrity/ep-253-understanding-human-nature-performance-optimization-and-the-alcohol-free-advantage-with-fred-auzenne-leader

There is a video version available, although we unfortunately had a technical snag this week so Fred’s side of the recording is a little choppy and the framerate is not kind to the eyes! But if you’d like to try it anyway, here’s the YouTube link: https://youtu.be/iYxVT9h9P2w

I’ll be back again next week to continue on the topic of addiction, alcohol, performance and wellness in the workplace with my next amazing guest, human performance strategist, Vicky Midwood.

That’s about it for this edition, all that’s left for me to say (as always), is: THANK YOU for reading, listening, supporting Leading with Integrity. There’s no show or newsletter, no future of leadership without each and every one of you.

Be a Leader Not a Boss,

- David

In case you don’t know me that well, I’m David Hatch and I’m here to help you lead like a Starfleet Captain.

If you’re a new manager or first-time leader in a tech, expertise or specialist driven workplace and you’re feeling lonely, stuck, overwhelmed, or simply ready for your next chapter in leadership, the Integrity Leaders Community offers conversations, courses, resources and support to help you grow one step at a time. If you have a healthy love of sci-fi and want to learn more about leadership, then this is the community for you! Solopreneurs also welcome. 😉