The Fogbow Right In Front Of You
by Joshua Routh
Every year my wife, Ginger, and I escape to Dauphin Island, Alabama, the week before and the week of Thanksgiving.
It's our in-between season.
My speaking calendar slows down. Our family calendar slips into that small quiet space between the hectic fall rush and the holiday madness. We still work, but the work gets sandwiched between long walks on the beach, quiet reflection, and catching up on movies we've promised to watch all year.
This week the island has been wrapped in fog every morning. Thick, silent, movie-set fog. Because it's the off-season, we have the beach completely to ourselves.
This morning, as the sun started burning through the fog, something strange appeared.
Right in front of me, maybe ten to twelve feet tall and fifteen to twenty feet long, a pale arc of light formed over the surf. Not the technicolor rainbow we're used to. This one was almost colorless. A ghost rainbow.
I'd stumbled into a fogbow.
What's a fogbow anyway?
If you've never seen one, a fogbow (or "white rainbow") shows up when sunlight passes through tiny droplets in fog instead of raindrops. Because the droplets are so small, the colors get smeared out. You don't get the bright bands of red, orange, yellow, green, blue. You get a soft, pale arc—almost white, with just the faintest whisper of color.
It's still a rainbow. The physics hasn't changed. But you only see it when the sun is behind you, the fog is in front of you, and you're willing to stand there long enough for the light to do its quiet work.
Standing on that empty beach, staring at this tiny ghost rainbow floating in the mist, I realized: This is exactly what sincere leadership feels like in foggy times.
Leadership in the fog
Right now, a lot of organizations are living in fog: unclear markets, constant change, hybrid work that still doesn't quite feel settled, teams tired from "one more transformation."
Everyone is asking, "Where are we going?" and "Can I trust what I'm being told?"
In clear weather, leaders can rely on big, obvious signals: strong numbers, full pipelines, packed calendars, lots of visible wins.
In the fog, those signals fade. And that's when sincerity stops being a "nice to have" and becomes your only real navigation system.
My work centers around that idea: helping organizations save money and drive engagement by creating workplaces people love and customers trust. The tool I lean on most is my SWORD Framework™—Self-Awareness, Witness, Openness, Repair, and Debrief—a practical roadmap for leading with sincerity.
On the beach this morning, that fogbow became a perfect picture of how it works.
How to find the "fogbow" in your culture
1. Self-Awareness: Notice your own fog first
You only see a fogbow when you know where you're standing. The sun has to be at your back. The fog has to be in front of you.
In leadership, that's self-awareness. What am I bringing into this moment? Where am I anxious, defensive, or checked out? What stories am I telling myself about my team, my customers, this season?
If you don't know where you're standing, everything feels like fog. Self-awareness is the moment you turn around and realize, "Oh. The light is behind me. I'm not lost. I'm just surrounded."
2. Witness: Look closely at what others are experiencing
A fogbow is easy to miss. It's subtle. No neon, no drama. You have to really look.
That's Witness.
Witnessing is about really seeing the people around you—not just their output but their effort, their fears, their hopes, their limits.
In foggy seasons, your people will give you tiny arcs of information: a quiet "Hey, can we talk?"; a change in tone on a call; less laughter in the break room; the one person who used to share ideas who has gone silent.
Those are fogbows. Subtle signals that, if you pay attention, tell you a lot about the health of your culture.
3. Openness: Admit you can't see everything (and invite others in)
Here's the truth: when you're standing in a fogbow, you can't see beyond it clearly. You get this beautiful, strange arc in front of you . . . and then a wall of gray.
Openness is the courage to say, "I don't have all the answers. But I'm willing to stand here with you and figure out our next step."
That might sound like "Here's what we know. Here's what we don't know yet"; "Here's what we're trying and why"; "Tell me what you're seeing that I might be missing."
Sincerity isn't about having a polished script. It's about being grounded and honest in real time.
4. Repair: Own the missteps you made in the fog
Foggy conditions make it easier to bump into things: a rushed email that landed harsher than you intended, a restructuring that left people confused, a change in expectations you didn't explain well.
Repair is where sincerity proves itself.
One of the most powerful things a leader can say is, "I didn't handle that as well as I could have. Here's what I'm changing."
When you step up and repair, you show that sincerity isn't just a word on your website. It's how you move through the mess.
5. Debrief: Capture what the fog taught you
A fogbow doesn't last long. As the sun rises and the fog burns off, it fades.
Debrief is the moment, once the visibility improves, where you ask: What did we learn about ourselves in that season? Where did we show up with sincerity? Where did we avoid it? What will we do differently next time the weather turns?
Without debrief, teams repeat the same mistakes in the next fog bank. With debrief, they walk into the next one with a shared language and a little more courage.
The complaint . . . or the fogbow?
One more thing about fog: it's easy to complain about.
"It's gross out." "I can't see anything." "Wake me up when this clears."
I spend a lot of time helping teams build complaint-free cultures—not by forcing toxic positivity but by helping them move from blame to ownership, from venting to collaboration.
When things are uncertain, complaining is a natural reflex. But it also blinds us to the fogbows right in front of us: the one team that actually got closer during the tough project, the customer who stayed because someone quietly went above and beyond, the tiny process fix that made everyone's life easier.
If you only talk about the fog, you miss the rainbow hiding inside it.
Three questions for the next foggy day at work
Next time your workplace feels unclear, try this:
Where is the light behind me?What values, commitments, or promises are supposed to be at my back right now?
Who's next to me in the fog?What do my people need to hear from me, honestly, even if I can't give them certainty?
What faint arc am I ignoring?What small signs of trust, progress, or connection are we overlooking because they aren't loud and colorful?
You may not change the weather. But you might start to see your culture differently.
This morning, that little fogbow on an empty Alabama beach reminded me: You don't need perfect clarity to lead. You need enough light behind you, enough presence in front of you, and enough sincerity to stand in the uncertainty with your people.
The fog will lift. The emails will pile back up. The calendar will get loud again.
But for a few minutes today, there was a ghost rainbow right in front of me.
And it was more than enough.