KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Emotional Intelligence: The Secret to Real Estate Success

Episode Date: October 22, 2025

Morning Primer is your weekday boost from Mindset & Motivation Monday—quick, focused, and made for agents by KGCI Real Estate On Air. Give yourself a daily mindset reset for the daily direction you need to show up sharp and ready to win.Start your morning ahead of the market and ahead of your competition every day with KGCI Real Estate On Air. Summary:This episode with Sara Delabsig provides a powerful look into the critical role of emotional intelligence in the real estate profession. She discusses how self-awareness, empathy, and effective relationship management are not just "soft skills" but essential tools for navigating complex client emotions, managing difficult negotiations, and building a resilient business. The episode offers a clear and actionable framework for agents to develop their emotional intelligence and apply it for both personal and professional growth. Ready for more? Subscribe now and tap into our Always Free Real Estate On Air Mobile App for iPhone and Android, where you’ll find our complete archive and 24/7 stream of proven real estate business-building strategies and tactics. 

Morning Primer, picking up where mindset and motivation Monday left off. No hype, just strategy mindset and direction from KGCI, Real Estate on Air. Agent PowerHuddle is a daily jumpstart, giving you all the tools you need to create an amazing real estate career. Led by top experts in the field, you'll learn how to sell more houses in less time while creating the life you want. Welcome to the Agent Power Huddle. Good morning, good morning. Good afternoon, good evening. Thanks so much for being here.

This is Keeping It Real Estate with me, Sarah DeLanzig. And I didn't know how to title this topic that we're going to be talking about today. Because I don't want people to think like, what does that have to do with real estate? I'm going to explain what it has to do with real estate. But so I think what it's going to be called is, emotional intelligence in the workplace and beyond. So I usually try to bring in real life experience to these to help people. And sometimes it's really hard because, you know, we go through stuff,

especially I'm team leaders. So I'm a team leader. You know, I have people and I've experienced some things and I want to share the good, the bad, the ugly. So that's what we're going to do to do. And with that, we're also going to look at our mindset. And so we're going to try to understand how to develop emotional intelligence. Hey, Alex. Because emotional intelligence is massively important. And I guess, you know, when you think of emotional intelligence, you might think of, I don't know. Like if you're a nerd, you might think of Star Trek and you might think of like Spock or something like a volcano.

And if you, well, somebody's got, I've got Eileen carrying myself. Can I imbue you? I wonder. Oh, okay, there we go. Massively important. Yes. Oh, okay. I didn't.

Thank you. Thank you. Darius, I appreciate that. Yes, it is massively important. And I'm going to explain why and I'm going to try to do this in a way that doesn't like hurt feelings, hopefully. But let's keep it real here, okay? That's what this is. It's keeping it real estate.

Let's keep it real. And let's really analyze this and see how this applies to our lives as agents and beyond. So the first thing I want to start with, though, is that it is August 14th of 2024 today. I'm sure a lot of you are going to be listening to this later. As a matter of fact, KGCI Radio, Real Estate on Air, has an app now. I'm not sure if it's out for everyone. But by the time you're hearing this, maybe you're listening to this on the app. So well, welcome.

And okay, so with that being said, August 17th, it's just around the corner. And most people want to talk about all of the craziness with that. And so I'm going to address something really quickly because I see, you know, I work all over the United States for all different kinds of people, including Alex, who's here. What's up, Alex? And I work for a really, really, the number one team in Georgia. and they um in Georgia it's a military it's like where they're at it's like a military area and people don't like to sign anything and with the whole thing coming up on August 17th um you know the lay of

the law is you know being put down and now we have to get people to sign stuff and a lot of people don't want to do it but I used to work in property management and you know showing apartments and things like that. And when you want to go see a rental property, you have to give over your license and you have to sign something. Okay, so I just want to encourage anyone that's like, oh, how am I going to get somebody to sign a buyer's agency agreement or anything like that? Look, if it's, if it is what it is and everybody's doing it, I mean, like, don't worry too much about it. I've had to have these conversations with a lot of people that they thought they weren't going to do it. We've been doing it for about a week now, getting these things signed, sending them digitally and things like that. And it's

actually working out really well. So that's why we're talking about mindset, too, because if you have the mindset that nobody's going to want to sign this, you know, this is all going to go to crap and everybody's going to quit and all of that. That's what you're going to get. So that's why we're here today, too, is to talk about how to have emotional intelligence, how to react properly to things. And this also stems from, like I said, my own experience with my own team and some situations that I have learned as a new business. Like I'm not a very, like we've been around almost three years now, but I led teams before, but I hadn't like led a big team for my business. I owned another business before. It was just me and my husband. So owning a business and leading a team, I have learned some things and people want to tell you

things. And first of all, the people that work for me cannot be my friends. And I have to make that very clear. But sometimes they want to talk to me like I am their friend. And I have to cut those conversations off because it can manipulate things and it has manipulated things in a way for me, which is sad but true. But now we all, I learned from it and now you all get to learn from it. So hopefully you'll take this advice from me and we'll all learn from my mistakes. Okay. So kind of what happened is that I had someone working with me. Actually, I've had multiple people. I'm not going to like just single one person out, but I've had situations where people will come in and have emotional reactions, you know, like, you know when somebody comes in and they are visibly upset

and they want you to ask them, what's wrong, right? And then they can go down this whole, oh, you know, my boyfriend got laid off and all this and I can't afford, blah, blah, blah, blah, and then all of a sudden, you're the one paying, you know, their paycheck. And now you're thinking, oh, my goodness, you know, like, oh, that's so sad. I feel so sorry for this person. Like, how can I help? And then now I'm put in a position where I feel like I have to do something. But it's not my problem. It's not really my problem, right? Like that's, that's something that they need to figure out. Or if, like, they take a job and they come and work for me and they know what the hourly rate is and then all of a sudden they're like, I need more.

I need more, I need more. Well, why did you take the job in the first place, right? Like, if it's not going to cover. I understand that situations happen. But I'm talking about what I had to learn because at first I reacted. And when I reacted in the way that was empathetic like I would to a friend, which is exactly what I did, even though I didn't want to, then what ended up happening is that they gained control and then they used that more and more to manipulate the situation even more.

So then they would drop, like even if they weren't talking directly. to me because at one point I was like, look, I don't want to, you know, keep your personal life, your personal life, keep that separate and keep, you know, work, work. Then they would, you know, go into another room and have a conversation with somebody else and I would overhear it. And then I was still like, okay, you know, so what I'm trying to say is, or let's use a little bit of a lighter example. Let's say that somebody that you work with and like you're on your team. You're like, hey, can you go show this house tomorrow? And they're like, oh my gosh, I will love to.

I'm just so stressed out because I have so much going on and they give you a reason why. And then you're like, oh, no, no worry, no problem. It's okay. I'll take care of it. And so you don't make them do it. So what you're doing is reinforcing their emotional reaction to kind of manipulate you to get what they want. So what I learned is that I had to stop reacting to this. I had to completely stop reacting to people's emotional responses, even when they were visibly

upset and trying to get my attention. And eventually, they don't, you know, they don't get what they want. And then you have other issues. But that's where this all stems from. So with that all being said, and keeping that in mind, now I want to get into where I like learn how to manage and cope with all of this. Now, originally it came from Laila Hermosies, like, I think it was like, how to control your emotions, um, video. But today I was listening to someone named Rob Dyle.

And I think his podcast is called the mentor mindset. I was really good. It was not real estate related, but it was really good podcast. And then also, um, Mel Robbins. And I think hers is also like a mentorship podcast or something like that.

Um, but really good stuff. So with that all being said, now we're going to talk about why this is important for real estate agents. Okay, so what I was just talking about, for team leaders, you know, my own experience, allowing people that worked with me to sway me with their personal issues, which is clearly not something that we should allow. Like, obviously, we want to be friendly.

We want to be empathetic. We want to be kind, but we can't do it at the expense of the business and at the expense of the team. So second, working with clients, learning how to control your own reaction, learning how to, we've all worked with those clients that are just a complete, Yeah, a complete mess. I was going to say something else, but we'll keep it here. So learning how to control your reactions. It also is a when you have emotional intelligence, then you'll have a better, well, emotional intelligence gives you the ability to act on things. Like it puts you into action. It motivates you. So or the opposite. So that's where it all stems back to mindset and how you think about things. And so what is your mindset? A lot of people. you know, maybe don't understand it totally, but mindset is the way that you view the world,

your thoughts and beliefs about the world and what is going on. Okay. So we've all heard the term rose-colored glasses, like, oh, you're wearing rose-colored glasses. I'm a psychology major, so I love stuff like this. As a matter of fact, I grew up. I'm the youngest of six. I have, you know, older siblings with mental health issues and things like that. And I saw, a lot of crazy stuff. So psychology was really something that showed me. I don't have to repeat the patterns of other things, right? And that's why I got into psychology. So we're going to talk about patterns and learning behaviors and where that comes from and things like that. But I think we also just need to talk about how to get your own rose colored glasses. If you have

rose colored glasses, you need to have the right ones on. Okay. So like we don't, we don't don't want let's just not have sunglasses on right because that's dark right so a lot of people view the word they're like i can't do this this isn't going to happen nobody's going to pick up the phone when i call i'm not good enough i'm not strong enough i'm not smart enough whatever you're telling yourself those beliefs become your reality and so a lot of have you ever been on vacation and you're in the most gorgeous place and you you're with you know at at a beautiful restaurant and there's somebody sitting across from you and they have all the money and they're you know on vacation and they're mad because the food's not coming out on time, right?

Like, you're in a perfect setting, you're enjoying, but you're upset about one little thing like that. So that's looking for the negative in things. So I think that for yourself, ask what your best friend would say you look for in other things. Like, what kind of glasses are you wearing? Are you wearing the positive, you know, do you have the bright glasses on?

Do you have something dark? And this is really serious. because not a lot of people know this, and I wasn't really going to go here, but I had a serious mental health break at one point. It was almost exactly 10 years ago now. One that most people don't get out of. Like, I literally lost my mind for probably about a year. And I thought everything was against me.

I lost my faith. I lost my identity. I lost my beauty. I lost a lot of things. Like I was down to like 99 pounds. I had acne. I didn't have any friends. Like all, everything that could go wrong did go wrong in my life.

And I started with one simple thought. And it's that it's, it's not what I think it is. It can, it's better. This isn't reality. And I had to build a foundation on one thought. Okay, this isn't really what I think it is. And to be just really frank, I thought my husband was cheating on me. And he wasn't.

at all, but I was to the point where I thought, like, there were speakers and things in the walls. Like, I was legit, not right in the head. And I'm okay saying that because I came out of it. But a lot of people don't. And a lot of people will let these thoughts and let these things completely suck them into despair. And I've seen it happen. I'm seeing it and happen with someone I know right now. And it's so heartbreaking because a lot of people just can't get out of it.

And so building one thought and starting to look at the positive. So I would say if your best friend says, you know what? You're impatient. That's my other problem. Right now, I'm the most impatient person. I know. I'm just throwing all my dirty. I'm not sure right now.

But anyways, you could all learn from it. I'm super impatient. So that's what everybody would tell me. You're impatient and I want things now. I want things now. And I have to try to remind myself. I actually bought a bracelet that will like remind me to be patient because, even driving here, I was stuck behind a semi-truck and I'm like, get out of the way, you know.

And I'm thinking to myself, oh, I'm going to go talk about emotional intelligence and I can't even get over this little semi-track. So either way, the point being that we need to start with simple thoughts, positive thoughts, understand where you are and what you really believe about yourself, and then build upon that. So another thing that I used to do is like I used to always, I'll always, I'll always, I'll apologize in my head. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Like, if I did something wrong, I'm sorry. And I started to pay attention to how often I said, I'm sorry in my own mind. And I'd be like, you're not sorry. Because like, sorry is not a, I mean, apologizing to someone and saying your sorry is different from like, always being like, oh, I messed up, I messed up, I messed up, right? So this was not the avenue I was planning

on going down. But you never know what's going to happen here on keeping it realistic. So, okay. So the other thing I was going to say is that when emotions are, are high, I love this quote, when emotions are high, logic is limited. I mean, just think about that. Literally the first thing that happens when you have an emotional reaction is that blood is reduced to your brain and you start to breathe differently. Okay. So one of the first things that you could do to learn emotional intelligence when you get triggered by something, take a deep breath. You know, even like I used to have such anxiety about talking to people on, even on Zoom, like, well, it's just silly. I'm a very outgoing person.

But when I know that people are looking at me and everything like that, I'm very outgoing. But as soon as I know that I'm the center of attention, I can, you know, my heart starts racing. Like, I'm sure all of you can think of something that will have a physical response in your body. I can think of sexual things, but we're still going to keep this PG. But the point being that all of us can imagine things that create a physical reaction. action in our bodies. And, you know, that's like how actors cry on command and things of that nature, right? So that is how you develop emotional intelligence, though, is by understanding how to use that and regulate it with your own body because it's going to want to go into fight or flight,

right? Now we can just take a deep breath, relax, don't shake, don't, you know, take a deep breath, right? that's the first place you could start. All right, I have a lot more, but I keep going off on a tangent. So we're going to get there. Don't worry. Okay. The first thing that happens when we get emotional is our breathing changes. Okay, yeah, I went over that.

All right. So Rob Dial and Mel Robbins is where this stuff came from. So why is it important? So decision making, managing relationships, conflict resolution, these are all key factors to your professional and personal success. Okay. Like, if you can learn how to manage, it's not even managing your emotions. It's managing your reaction to emotion.

Because there's a space between, I think there was a quote that was on there. It was like the space between stimuli and your reaction. You have that opportunity. That's where you decide what you want to do. And that's where I decided, take a deep breath. Don't get mad at the semi-truck guy. It's not his fault. Okay.

Some experts say that emotional intelligence even more important than cognitive intelligence because, I mean, look, cognitive intelligence is everything, but have you ever seen one of those people that cannot read social cues? My brother is like this. He's, you know, it's not totally autistic,

but he's got, I can't remember what it's called, the lower version of autism. Goodness gracious, I can't think of, the word but um aspergers aspergers yeah yeah yeah so he can't he can't really read the social cues like he can't he can't see it right and and even

very recently something happened and he we had to like sit him down and me like this is this is what happened so like he's very very intelligent you know runs businesses things like that um but if you can't read a room if you can't sense what's happening around you sometimes you can't react accordingly and that can be an issue. So that's why we need to understand, identify, and regulate our emotion. So the number one way we do this is with self-awareness. And that's why I was telling you knowing what your own emotional issues are. Right. So one of

mine was that I very empathetic towards people when I hear a sob story. I want to help. I want to, you know, I want to do things. But it depends on what role I'm in. What hat am I wearing? Right? At that moment, is it my friend that's talking to me? That's different than if it's somebody that's on my team that, you know, maybe using that situation to get something out of it, right? So knowing how to assess your own emotional state, right? Understand how your body reacts when you envision something terrifying, which we kind of went over. So, you know, imagine eating something disgusting. Your body's going to respond to that, right? Like I was watching the challenge last night and they were eating the most disgusting stuff. And if I think about it, I might just gag.

but that's how powerful our thoughts are, which is why visualization and meditation and like, you know, automatic writing, which we're about to get into stress journaling. So these are all ways that you can help understand how aware you are of your own patterns and your emotional patterns. So if you're my dad, my dad is one of those people I probably got my impatience from because like when driving, you know, like he'll yell at the semi-truck guy, right? And that's what I grew up seeing. And then I have the pattern of doing the same thing. Or we'll use something more fun than that. How about football, right? I love the Seahawks. I freaking die-hard Seahawks fan, about to happen soon. My dad yells at the TV when the Seahawks make a great play or when they don't, you know, come on you guys, what the hell is

that? Like, that was most of what I heard when we were growing up until they got good about 10 years ago or 15 years ago. So, um, so I do the same thing. I yelled at the TV. I don't yell at them when they're bad though because I'm trying to keep positive here. Okay, but I broke that pattern, but not totally. So we're working on it, right? Okay, so that's just an example. The patterns that you grow up with how you can regulate them and how you can learn from them. Okay. Um, okay, so stress journaling will help you identify triggers and patterns. Do it with no judgment. So if you have a situation that's really stressing you out, like I had a situation recently. and just it could be automatic writing or it could be stress journaling, right?

I find automatic writing fascinating. You can do it. I've done it on the notes app on my phone. It's a little bit easier for me because I can finger type faster than I can write. And so I will just write. I don't know what I'm going to write right now. What am I thinking about? What do we need?

What's going on? And I will type that out until I get to the core of wherever I'm trying to go. What do I want? What is stressing me out? How am I feeling? You know, what makes me happy? What do I get excited about? These are questions you can ask yourself.

But in addition to that, I have an actual, oh, well, there they are. Okay, what are you feeling? That's the question you want to ask yourself, okay? What are you feeling about the situation? Why are you feeling that way? How can that impact you and the people around you? And what can you do about it? Because if you have no control, if you have no control over something,

I see people do this. And this is what happened to me years ago, and this is why I brought it up. I see people spiral out of control with fear. They're afraid of this. They're afraid of that. So they focus fully on fear, which is why when we come back to, like, what kind of glasses are you wearing? Don't put the fear glasses on. Don't put the panic glasses on.

That's why sometimes with this state of politics and things, it's so hard for me to, like, watch that because it's a lot of, like, focus on, like, look at all the scary things that can happen. I don't want to look at scary things that can happen. Like, I understand they're at risk, and I understand that we need to be intelligent about the way that we assess a situation. But I don't want to sit here and think about every possible horrible thing that could happen. I did that when my son was born, because there's nothing more terrifying than having an infant knowing they could just die in the middle of the night because of sudden infant death syndrome.

So raising my son now to be almost 17, you know, you have to eventually, you have to, eventually you have to learn how to just accept what is and you know you can't think I can think of nine billion things right now that could just ruin my life do I want to think about them oh and if I do think about them that's just going to put one domino effect into the next until I'm just totally and then all I see is negative and that's I guess that's the whole point of what I'm trying where I'm trying to go with this everyone's getting a lesson in psychology today Okay. Let's see where is the next one. Okay. So another way that I cope with stress and handle it is with meditation, visualization, which I mentioned earlier.

There are many, many apps that can help me with this. Lots of them are free. Some of them are not. The Envision app, it's E-N, and then Vision, and it's all one word, the envision, envision. that one has free stuff on it and it is really cool there's little tiny things that are like you know imagine your bank account with lots and lots of money in it and you know and I'm not talking about like toxic positivity here I'm not telling you to like try to just be completely positive and and not have any negative thoughts or like pick yourself into anything I'm just saying like find something you believe and that is positive start there put that into place put that there and then build upon that. Does that make sense? Did anyone have any questions about anything?

No far? No? Okay. All right. Tom I saw you came off mute so I wasn't sure. Okay. Well, if you guys have questions, you let me know. And then, um, let's see. Some of the other things that I was going to talk about are, I mean, I want, I want this to be not just for team leaders, but also for solo agents and everything like that, right? So, but I want you to think, like, as a solo agent, like, where are you going? What do you want? Like, if you, and even with your own children. So I guess it's going to apply to anything. But I try, I tend to lean heavy on the team leader stuff because that's what I experience, you know, with my own business and everything. But I don't want to like, you know, only focus on that. So if you are a solo agent, all of the things that I'm talking about can still help

you massively. So, um, please, you know, use them. just in reality because I think it is really important that we understand how to react to our emotions and how to regulate them. And if we understand and look at those things that I told you to ask yourself, which was why am I feeling this or what am I feeling? Why am I feeling that way? How can that impact me and the people around me? And what can I do about it? Right. So if you are looking at those questions and answering those questions, when you're in an emotional state, calm down, take a deep breath, meditate, focus on the positive, then that'll be a good way to start. The only other thing I will say is that sometimes when you've been burned by others,

even in relationships, like I've been with my husband 26 years, we just celebrated our 26th anniversary, 22 years of marriage total. So we've been to get a long time. But I do know from other relationships that sometimes, you know, you get your heartbroken or something happens and then you look at the next person and you put those issues onto this person. Well, that person's not going to, you know, and you start seeing it that way. I think we have to try to separate all of that and look at people individually because

sometimes what I would do is I would start to. take all of the other things and go, maybe this person is doing that too. Maybe they're also having, you know, whatever. Like, for example, maybe they're milking the clock. Maybe they're faking their hours. Maybe they're, you know, um, asking clients for things they shouldn't ask for or something like that, right? So, um, so try not to take your big pile of junk and pile it onto the next person, right? We need to separate and identify. And then when somebody has given you evidence of who they are, like when somebody shows you who they are, believe them, right?

I think that's a quote that we've all heard. I think it's Maya Angelou, but I'm not positive. But yeah, so when somebody shows you they are, believe them, but actions always tell you who a person is. Actions tell you who the person is, not their words. So words can, you know, be effective for all kinds of things, but look at a person's actions, and then you'll know who they have. And that is pretty much all I have today.

Hopefully in two weeks I will have more calls to share. I didn't prepare one. But I've had a lot of good calls lately. And yay, thank you. I appreciate that. I'm glad you guys enjoyed it. Oh, good. Darius, I'm glad that it helps solo agents because I don't want to go too far off on a tangent

on just team leader and da-da-da-da-da. I do think, though, that the experience that I have can lend in a client to agent's situation and other things in your family. And I just want people to understand, like, you can get out of the darkness. I've done it. It's not easy. Like, but you can. So start with the good. Put on the positive glasses. Take off the fear. Take off the shame. Take off the blame. And start looking at the world differently. And then you will build on that. Ready. Thank you so much. Well, I will see you guys. guys later. Thank you for coming. Thank you, D.F. Thank you so much. All right. Bye.

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