Many commercial real estate leaders are talking about the value of emotional intelligence these days — also known as “EQ.”
Emotional intelligence is the ability to perceive, control and evaluate your own emotions while being in tuned with and empathetic of others’ feelings and behaviors. The ability to express and control your own emotions while being highly perceptive when it comes to others’ emotions is critically important in sales. Similarly, it’s even more important if you have a leadership role in your company.
According to author Daniel Goleman, People with high emotional intelligence can recognize their own emotions and those of others, they use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior, they discern between different feelings and label them appropriately, plus they adjust emotions to adapt to environments.
TalentSmart has conducted research with more than a million people and found that 90% of top performers are skilled at managing their emotions in times of stress in order to remain calm and in control.
According to VeryWellMind.com, emotional intelligence can be used in several key ways:
- Being able to accept criticism and responsibility
- Being able to move on after making a mistake
- Being able to say no when you need to
- Being able to share your feelings with others
- Being able to solve problems in ways that work for everyone
- Having empathy for other people
- Having great listening skills
- Knowing why you do the things you do
- Not being judgmental of others
So how do you know if you are an emotionally intelligent person or leader? Well, here’s a checklist from Dooly.ai, which identified six traits of sales professionals who possess high EQ:
- They’re empathetic
- They have emotional self-control
- They understand their own strengths and weaknesses
- They’re adaptable
- They understand their time is valuable
- They’re inherently optimistic
The most effective brokers never forget that emotion is always part of every deal. Humans are emotional creatures. We are fraught with feelings – both positive and negative. Brokers are more likely to succeed when they embrace emotion and work with it as opposed to discounting it or even working against it.
As the late poet Maya Angelou famously said, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
