by Coach JoyGenea with structure assistance from Notion AI. Image from ChatGPT
If you have ever delegated a project with what felt like crystal-clear direction, only to hear, “That won’t work,” you are not alone.
I see this pattern often with unconventional leaders: the leader has already done the deep processing. The team has not. The result can look like resistance, but it is usually something else entirely.
What is really happening when a great team pushes back?
A client shared a scenario that is incredibly common.
They are the owner and founder of their company. They handed a major initiative, a product build, to their managers and laid it out clearly:
- What “done” looks like
- The direction to take
- Why the approach should produce the best result
And then came the pushback.
Not because the managers were disengaged. Not because they wanted to sabotage the work.
They resisted because they did not fully see the vision yet. They did not fully understand how to execute the project.
When that happens, leaders often feel stuck.
They have delegated, but they cannot see the real questions or concerns that are slowing the team down.
The simple tool that changes the timeline: Micro clarification meetings
The solution is a lightweight structure I call micro meetings.
These are short, focused meetings you run immediately after delegation and then continue over the next one to two weeks.
Here is the format:
- Time box it to 5 to 10 minutes.
- Use a visible timer. If you are on Zoom, put the timer where everyone can see it. In person, set a timer on someone’s phone.
- Clarification only. These are micro clarification meetings. The leader’s job is to answer questions, surface concerns, and clarify the direction.
That is it. No long debates. No sprawling status meetings.
Why micro meetings work (especially for unconventional leaders)
Unconventional leaders typically arrive at a decision after processing through multiple layers of details and information.
By the time the idea is ready to delegate, it has depth. It has context. It has reasoning.
But the team has not been on that internal journey.
So, the team still needs time to process.
Without a structure, that processing can take one to two months.
Over time, the team may eventually buy in, take ownership, and move it forward. In fact, sometimes they even start debating where the idea came from in the first place.
Team ownership is a good thing, but a two-month “questioning phase” is costly.
It wastes time. It burns money. It slows progress.
Micro clarification meetings compress that timeline.
They give you early visibility into:
- What is confusing
- What assumptions are misaligned
- What concerns are real and actionable
- What may actually require a pivot
And if a pivot is needed, you find out quickly, not two months later.
Signs you need micro clarification meetings
This tool is a strong fit if you delegate and repeatedly run into:
- Immediate “nope” responses
- Long buy-in cycles
- Delayed action even with capable people
- A pattern where momentum only shows up after weeks of slow processing
The takeaway
If this sounded familiar, it is not a character flaw in you or your team.
It is a communication gap that can be solved with the right structure.
Micro clarification meetings help your team process faster so progress does not stall, and so the work can move forward with shared clarity and meaning.
IMPLIMENT
Want to adapt this to your team?
Try it with your next delegated initiative. Run three micro meetings in the first week, then assess:
- What questions came up repeatedly?
- What did your team need that you assumed was already clear?
- What would have taken a month to surface without the structure?
I would love to hear how this works out for you and your team. Please feel free to leave a comment.
Video transcription:
So, fabulous conversation this morning with a client, and in such unconventional leadership ways, they really brought out something that I hear from a lot of clients. Being unconventional leaders, there is a gap that can happen in communication and in particular this scenario, it’s super funny um, he’s the owner and founder of this company, and he had a project, it was actually a product build, that they were gonna be moving forward with. He brought it to his managers and was like okay, here’s what we’re gonna do, here’s what done looks like, you know, here’s how we should do it to get the best result, all those things. And then the next thing he ran into was resistance. ‘Oh no, that’s not gonna work. No, oh we can’t do it like that we’ve been doing it this way, and his team is all in, and he has a great team, so it’s not that, they just have resistance. They have resistance because they aren’t fully seeing the vision. They aren’t fully understanding how they’re gonna execute it- the project- so we broke that down, and we had a deeper conversation about it, and this is what can be so helpful- I call them micro meetings.
Once he delegates like that, which is his style, he can’t- there’s so much data to- he doesn’t, and he doesn’t know what’s holding them back, and what their questions are. So, moving forward- I have a variety of clients that do this- they have micro meetings with their managers. Over the next week or two weeks, until they get them shifted. The goal is to expedite that time of questioning and being concerned like that, so he’s gonna have micro meetings, and micro meetings are five to ten minutes. They’re super brief. You set a timer that everybody sees in zoom. You can stick it up on the corner. If you’re in person, somebody sets it on their phone- but it’s- and everybody’s looking at it, so that you’re all very clear, we are gonna have this discussion, and the main key is for him to merely clarify these are micro clarification meetings. So, any questions they have, let’s clarify it, let’s work on it that way. Sometimes the managers do have really good points, and some things need to pivot, but he’s not hearing about them until a month or two months later when they’re finally bought in, and they’re like, ‘you know what, yeah okay,’ and then they’ve taken some ownership of it, and some sometimes like with this project they were debating who exactly came up with the idea for it to go in this direction, and he said he was just sitting there the whole time like, ‘me you like, you goobers it was me.’ But it’s awesome when your team takes it on as partially their own. Doesn’t matter who came up with it, it matters that it moves forward, especially after it’s taken a month or two months, which is not uncommon. I see that often with unconventional leaders, their team just wasn’t there for the in-depth processing that was necessary to bring an idea fully to fruition to get it to the place that you’re able to delegate it. It’s multiple layers, it’s so deep. It’s so high like, it’s so all those things, and so your managers, your team, they need to process through that. Your goal, as a leader, is to help them process through that so much faster, so it’s not wasting time, money, it’s not slowing progress down, it’s instead building forward, and adding depth and meaning to where you’re looking at going.
If you run into problems like this, if this sounded familiar, you delegate something, and your team turns around and hope
it can’t be done, we don’t know, and it takes all the buying and the action takes way too long, and you know it yeah that’s about the communication, and finding the right tools with your team to get everything moving forward. If you would like to learn more about that, or could use a little help with that, awesome. That’s one of the things working with a coach can be really helpful for. I would do this all the time. Thank you so much for hanging out with me, I’m JoyGenea international neurodiversity coach, unconventional leadership coach, and champion for the outside-of-the-box leader and thinker. Thank you so much.