Liliia Alekseenko, founder of Educay, business trainer, and ICF coach, shares her experience on how to inspire a team to succeed.

People say inspired teams work several times more effectively than ordinary ones. How can you verify that?

Let’s first define the term “inspired team.” Such a team has high motivation — that is, a high charge of energy it can direct toward its work. We call a “charged-up” team a motivated team that knows what it needs to do, understands how to do it — and does it. Highly motivated teams accomplish more than they would with low motivation.

Why is their effectiveness higher? Precisely because the people on the team can reach agreement more easily and solve tasks faster. We’re talking not about individual work, but specifically about teamwork.

An inspired team is a team with awakened motivation. These are people who draw inspiration from one another and, through their interaction, generate a synergistic effect by the formula 2 + 2 = 5. That effect arises when a team understands WHAT and HOW it needs to do something, and most importantly — what it’s all for.

How can you verify it? Very simply. We look at whether the team has high motivation and whether employees are ready to invest a little more in their work processes or in the project. This isn’t about overworking — it’s about employees setting more ambitious goals for themselves, solving more complex tasks, and delivering larger-scale projects — and achieving all of it faster compared to an unmotivated team.

Where do charismatic leaders come from, and how do they emerge?

It’s as good a term as it is a difficult one. What is charisma in the first place, and what kind of leader do we call charismatic? It’s a person you want to follow, whose ideas you want to bring to life, and whose tasks you want to carry out. Such a leader knows how to inspire and energize others by setting clear tasks before them and giving them the energy they need.

I believe that leadership is a quality you can and should develop in yourself. Leaders are the very same people we meet everywhere, every day. The moment a person realizes what they want and understands where to go, they become a leader — even if they don’t always feel like one. The main thing is that they have a concrete goal they can clearly communicate to their team. And if there is no team — they can “infect” other people with their vision and create one this way.

A charismatic leader is born the moment a person is inspired by their inner goal, has felt the inner strength to achieve it, and is able to share that.

Do you consider yourself a charismatic leader?

I’d say yes. I worked very hard precisely to “level up” my inner confidence. I take on only the projects I genuinely fall in love with. And the moment a project begins to inspire me, I can pass that on to the team. When I’m in love with a project, it’s easy for me to sustain motivation — both my own and the team’s.

Why is it impossible to simply copy the model other leaders use to inspire their teams?

On the contrary — a successful model should be copied. To my clients, the leaders of large teams, I often quote a phrase attributed to Pablo Picasso: “Good artists copy; great artists steal.” So “steal like an artist”: watch what the person who inspires you does, observe, and be sure to take that behavioral model for yourself. In your hands it will turn out a little different anyway, because you’ll reproduce it in your own style.

How do the widely known models we use so broadly come about? SMART, for example, is classic modeling. A person observes how someone does something well, analyzes what produces the better result, and describes those actions. They describe one person, then a second, then a third, find what they have in common, and formulate a simple model that can be passed on to someone else. So notice what the person who inspires you does — and do the same, but in your own way. Then it will work.

Can you teach any manager to inspire their team?

Answering “yes” may seem very ambitious. There are important conditions:

  • The manager must want to inspire their team.
  • They must come to love the project they’re working on.
  • First they must learn to inspire themselves — to understand what charges and inspires them personally.

That’s exactly how we structure our work with managers. We start with the self — we determine what’s important to me, what makes me valuable, what I can already do as a leader — and then we explore:

  • What else is important for me to find or create in the project so that it inspires me?
  • What else do I need to learn in order to inspire the team?
  • Where am I already able to inspire?
  • What can I, as a manager, give my team in this project?
  • How can this project inspire other people? What important thing will it give them?
  • What inspires them in the first place?

Anyone can absolutely inspire — I’m completely sure of that.

What effort should you put in, and what effort should the person being taught put in?

Here I’ll easily take responsibility off my own shoulders: the effort comes largely from the person being taught. It’s about the ability to learn, the desire to become a leader, inner interest, and a willingness to try new things. The question is less about effort and more about desire. If a person truly wants to learn, then on my side I’ll provide simple, practical tools. The learner’s task is to choose from them what suits them specifically, to practice, and to refine it.

Would you turn down a manager who isn’t ready to inspire at all?

If a person really wants to change, I’ll be delighted and ready to do everything to help them change. But when a manager brings in their subordinate and says, “Teach them!” — that doesn’t work. If a person has no inner need, interest, or desire to grow, no techniques will help. Only inner interest does. A manager who comes on their own with a request to learn how to inspire — I won’t turn them down.

How long does it take to teach a person to inspire a team?

The timeframe varies a great deal — it depends on the baseline settings the manager arrives with. With those who only know how to give orders but want to move forward, we work for one to two months. With managers who are too soft, we work in a different direction: how to inspire while still asking for results. Here a single session may be enough if the person is inwardly ready, or two to three months if they’ve never done it before. The timeframe for change is always individual.

And how do you inspire the team itself?

First of all, you have to fall in love with what you do yourself and have a clear understanding of what you want to get as a result. Then convey it to people, show them their strength, reveal what they’re truly talented at, and “toss” them tasks that will sharpen their skills. If you boil it down to three key points:

  1. Define the project’s goal — what it will bring, at the level of values, to you personally and to your team.
  2. Engage your employees by drawing on their strengths. Show them how they can grow within this project.
  3. Track motivation along the way — guide it and help sustain it through the project’s values.

Do you have to inspire the team all the time?

There’s no single answer — it all depends on several criteria. One of the main ones: how strongly is the team affected by external contexts? We worked with a company’s team that was first sold off and then overtaken by external changes. To keep the work going, the manager had to put in twice the effort for a long time. But it also happens that a team begins to inspire itself — internal leaders emerge within it, ready to pick up the banner.

We motivate not every day, but at specific points: when we sense the team is losing inspiration; when we’re starting a big new project; and, without fail, at the end of a project, before the next one begins. Our job as leaders is to keep the focus on the inner state of the team as a whole and of each of its members.