If you manage people today, you’ve probably noticed it: the uncertainty that creeps in long before anyone names it. The mood shifts. The energy zaps. People hesitate. Decisions that used to feel obvious suddenly feel heavier, slower or perhaps more fragile. Even high performers start second-guessing themselves. And beneath the busyness, something else emerges: doubt.
That’s the Fog.
We often imagine the Fog as a moment — a crisis, a pivot, some point on the calendar when everything changed. But more often it creeps in quietly and stays. A swirl of shifting priorities, competing strategies, restructuring and turnover, burnout hiding behind “I’m good,” and managers stuck between what their people need and what the job demands.
And no one feels this more than HR, people managers and team leads.
Not because they’re closest to the problems, but because they’re closest to the people. They’re the frontline interpreters of uncertainty. When confusion rises, they absorb it first. When clarity is missing, they’re expected to provide it. When pressure builds, they carry it on both shoulders.
In a world where uncertainty is the default operating environment, here’s how people managers can keep teams grounded, motivated and moving forward.
1. Reward leadership as an act, over a role
Some of the most meaningful leadership in organizations today doesn’t come from the person with the title. It comes from the person who speaks truth when silence would be far safer.
During a leadership offsite I facilitated, a participant courageously stood up and named something she’d been experiencing for months: her ideas were brushed aside until male peers repeated them. You could feel the air shift. Some people froze. Others looked away. But a few leaned in.
It was uncomfortable. It was vulnerable. It was honest. But that’s the moment when the room, the team within it, became more human. More connected. More aligned.
That was leadership.
Managers shouldn’t rely on hierarchy to surface what matters. They must build environments where these truth-telling moments aren’t rare, they’re routine. Where people don’t wait for permission to lead, they step into it because it matters.
Shared leadership reduces hesitation and increases collective intelligence. When people feel safe to speak the truth, the Fog fades.
2. Replace comfort with confidence
In uncertain times, managers instinctively try to shield employees from discomfort. While this comforting act may be well-intended, it hinders growth. Discomfort is often where growth begins. An HR executive I worked closely with described these events as “heat moments” — challenging situations that generate enough discomfort to foster the growth required to overcome them.
Teams grow not by avoiding such “heat moments” but by stepping into them. And if that means failure, good. We need failure to be contained and learned from, not avoided and repeated.
Your job isn’t to remove the Fog for your team. Your job is to say, “This is hard, and you’re capable of navigating it.” When people see themselves as capable, uncertainty becomes a challenge rather than a threat.
3. Coach decisions in motion
Fog freezes teams because decisions start to feel like irreversible bets. Managers ask: What if this goes wrong? Teams respond: Let’s wait until we know more. Momentum dies.
Great managers flip the script. They coach the team to move through learning, not after learning. The lesson is simple: like building a sandcastle on the beach. Build something small, early and incomplete so you can learn what the tide will do.
To coach decisions in motion:
- Break choices into smaller, actionable steps
- Shorten the cycle between reviews
- Normalize feedback as critical to the process
Motion creates confidence. Confidence creates clarity — the scarcest of resources in the Fog.
4. Make connection a core part of the strategy
Workplace belonging is now a performance requirement, not a perk. Managers often overestimate the importance of work compared to the human connection required to perform it at speed and quality. In our ultra-digital work world, where virtual engagement is the norm, leaders need to double down on their humanness.
Uncertainty isolates people. Connection reunites them. But employees aren’t seeking another virtual happy hour; they’re craving purposeful interaction and meaningful collaboration. Creating the time and space to bring cross-functional teams together pays off with significant contributions from an engaged workforce, far exceeding the required investment.
A connected team doesn’t just survive the Fog. It becomes a place of grounding, a system of support instead of a source of stress. And in environments where people feel seen, they’re far more resilient and far more willing to contribute their best ideas.
5. Stop pretending leaders need the answers
Employees have never expected perfection from their managers. But they do expect honesty and integrity. Amid uncertainty, the most powerful words a leader can say are “I don’t know yet, but we’ll find our way through this together.”
Answers are overrated. Alignment, transparency and shared commitment are not. Leaders who thrive in this environment are more willing to bring the problem to their people, not the solution. And in doing so, they earn something valuable — engagement, ownership and commitment. That combination is far more powerful than any single “right” answer.
Organizations that successfully navigate the Fog in the years ahead will be the ones with managers skilled at navigating ambiguity and teams confident enough to keep moving when certainty disappears.
Leadership isn’t about eliminating the Fog. It’s about learning to lead through it.
Opinions expressed by SmartBrief contributors are their own.
____________________________________
Take advantage of SmartBrief’s FREE email newsletters on leadership and business transformation, among the company’s more than 250 industry-focused newsletters.