Leading a team in real estate isn’t just about business strategy. You can be the world’s greatest entrepreneur with an unmatched mastery of the housing market, but as a real estate team leader, lacking emotional intelligence will leave your team members confused and unmotivated. Here are a few strategies for becoming more emotionally intelligent:
Outline the Concern
When your agents describe an issue or problem, even if you have 30 years of experience and think you’ve seen it all, you shouldn’t assume you know everything about the specific situation.
Don’t try to fill in the gaps in their story. Instead, allow them the time for a complete explanation of the problem and the context. Ask as many follow-up questions as necessary to get a complete understanding. Once your team member has told you the whole story, you can offer solutions, but it’s important to first let them explain the problem in its entirety.
Clarify the Emotions
Emotions impact business decisions, so to be able to coach others effectively, you’ll need to know how your team members are feeling about their successes, failures and everything in between. Once you know how someone truly feels about something, you can create a stronger connection and solutions that are tailor made for their situation. When an agent feels happy about their past or current results, an emotionally intelligent team leader can slip in a challenge to double or even triple revenue.
Be sure to focus on positive emotions as well as the negative ones. You can correct things to overcome the negative emotions and set new growth targets, both professionally and personally, when emotions are high.
Make a Connection
When real estate agents describe an issue they need help with, the best way to help is to empathize. Think about a time when you had a similar situation. Think about what you did to get through the experience and remember how you felt. What emotions did that situation create? Having empathy will help you better understand your agents’ needs and the best ways to make improvements.
If your agents’ issue isn’t similar to something you have experienced, then expand your thinking to past clients or colleagues who may have had a similar issue. If those colleagues or clients described to you how they were feeling while experiencing that problem, use that information to better relate to your team member.
You Can Practice Emotional Intelligence
If the idea of discussing personal details and emotions sounds uncomfortable to you, this problem can be solved by practicing. Everyone can improve their emotional intelligence by learning listening skills and scripts to collect information. Email me at verl@workmansuccesssystems.com, and I’ll shoot you over a quick script you can use with real estate agents to connect on a more personal and emotional level.
Verl Workman is the founder and CEO of Workman Success Systems (385-282-7112), an international speaking, consulting, and coaching company that specializes in performance coaching and building successful power agents and teams. For more information, visit www.WorkmanSuccess.com.
