Part 2. Emotional Intelligence (EQ): How Self Regulation can improve your property client interactions...

When he wrote the breakthrough book Emotional Intelligence in 1995, Daniel Goleman identified the five pillars of Emotional Intelligence: Self Awareness, Self Regulation, Social Skill, Empathy and Motivation. This article looks at how to social skills can enhance your personal and professional outcomes when dealing with property customers.

We’re in the business of people, and all the whiz-bang technology in the world is not going to help build that relationship if you cannot connect with your customer! Therefore, it is universally known that strong emotional intelligence is one of the best tools you can have as a buyer's agent.

Whether you are transacting with a buyer or a seller – the trigger, or the motivation, is essentially emotionally driven. As a buyer's agent, your ability to understand your customer's emotional motivations and empathise with them can turbo-charge your ability to meet their needs and close the deal.

Patience is a Virtue

Buyer's agents with high emotional intelligence are more aware of their own emotions. This allows them to display more patience towards their customers. They can better regulate their emotional input into the process, thus self-assuring customers and making them feel more comfortable. Typically, they also have more highly developed social skills enabling them to connect with a broader number of people.

They seldom lash out, attack, make irrational decisions, judge, or compromise their values. On the contrary, self-regulation is all about staying in control.

If you practice self-regulation and know how to monitor and control your emotions then already you are ahead of the pack.

Put simply, you think before you unleash them on the people around you! No knee-jerk reactions here, thanks!

Now that you know what self-regulation looks like, it’s also useful to have a clear picture of what it looks like if you don’t self-regulate.

As noted at the beginning of this article, we are in the business of people. When it comes to transacting their prized assets, many buyers and sellers are coming from an emotionally charged place. Thus, it is up to us to manage that emotion. A lack of self-regulation can result in emotional, irrational, or inappropriate outbursts in the workplace.

The buyer's agents who self-regulate effectively are a rare and inspirational species.

Self-Regulation

Self-regulation means having the ability to not only control what’s going on around you but also to understand the intrinsic values that are most important to you. Right now, you might be thinking: ‘Sure, but how do I get to that place?’

You could start by getting familiar with your “code of ethics.”

John McCormack of Starr Partners Real Estate says: “Agents must have a positive attitude, honesty, loyalty, enthusiasm, integrity, people skills, drive and ambition, a high level of organisational skills, dedication, flexibility and being a team player. Above all, they must be ethical.”

If you know what’s truly most important to you, you will instinctively know which way to step when faced with a moral or ethical decision.

Cast your mind back to the last time you had a customer experience where your buttons were pushed to the point where you felt compelled to push back. What happened when you pushed back?

Was it a win? Or did you get the moral victory but lose the battle?

EQ is about gut feeling and knowing your limits, boundaries, and options. Stick to the signposts, and you will soon start to discover a world of more options.

Follow these tips to get started

Hold yourself accountable

Do you naturally tend to blame others when something goes wrong? If that is the case – stop! Make a commitment to own it and face the outcomes, whatever they are. This ensures you will have a clear conscience as well as earn the respect of those around you.

Practise being calm

Expressing these emotions on paper (and not showing them to anyone!) is safer and more effective than expressing them in anger. The next time you’re in a challenging situation, be very aware of how you act and try these tips:

• Practise deep-breathing exercises to calm yourself.
• Write down all the negative things you want to say, and then, when you’ve got it out of your system and onto the page, tear it up and throw it away.

Slow down

When you experience anger or other strong emotions, slow down to examine why. Remember, no matter the situation, you can always choose how you react.

There are plenty of opportunities to improve social skills when dealing with property customers. Many successful buyer's agents thrive on word of mouth. They start with networking and the willingness to always stop and have a chat with local community and potential clients. Doing so will enable you to give your social skills a good hard daily workout.

In next week's article we look at how to apply Empathy.

(Article first published by Elite Agent in 2020)

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