Most of what I do at REIC is not real estate related at all. I don’t know much about buying a home and I don’t know a whole lot about the current real estate market other than it kind of stinks right now. I deal with all of the company policies and procedures, manage the crazies that run around the office and ensure are in compliance with every law ever created for the workplace! No, I’m not like Toby from The Office…Ok, well maybe I am. But that is beside the point. A project I’ve been working on is Leadership Training. Trying to figure out what kinds of leaders we want to build at REIC, what to teach them, what books to read, what ROI the company will get from it. I do A LOT of reading and research about motivating employees, recruiting, selecting and hiring the right people and building company culture. I have an extensive list of books to read for the summer, one of them is Emotional Intelligence. Earlier today, I was reading an article that highlighted a few points from that book and gave 11 key steps to success and applied them to the workplace. To introduce these 11 keys to success, Julie Jansen wrote: “Time and again, it is apparent that those individuals who exhibit these 11 keys and use them most productively are consistently the most successful and well-liked individuals overall. The good news is that most people are born with at least some of these keys or learned them at a very young age, and all of these keys can be developed or learned later in life.” The following steps are:

1. Confidence: an unshakable belief in oneself based on a realistic understanding of one’s circumstances; a trait that most people admire in others and strive to acquire themselves.

2. Curiosity: being eager to know and learn; always showing interest and giving special attention to the less obvious; always being the person who says, “I want to know more about . . . .”

3. Decisiveness: arriving at a final conclusion or making a choice and taking action; making decisions with determination even when you don’t have all the information you think you need.

4. Empathy: demonstrating caring and understanding of someone else’s situation, feelings and motives; always thinking about what it’s like to walk in someone else’s shoes.

5. Flexibility: being capable of change; responding positively to change; being pliable, adaptable, nonrigid and able to deal with ambiguity.

6. Humor: viewing yourself and the world with enjoyment; not taking life or yourself too seriously; being amusing, amused and, at times, even comical.

7. Intelligence: thinking and working smartly and cleverly; being sharp in your dealings; “not reinventing the wheel”; planning before acting; working efficiently and focusing on quality over quantity. (Important note: This is different from IQ, the common abbreviation for intelligence quotient.)

8. Optimism: expecting the best possible outcome and dwelling on the most hopeful or positive aspects of a situation; believing that the glass is half full rather than half empty.

9. Perseverance: having passion, energy, focus and the desire to get results. Motivation, persistence and hard work are all aspects of  perseverance.

10. Respect: remembering that it is just as easy to be nice; protecting another person’s self-esteem; treating others in a considerate and courteous manner.

11. Self-awareness: a sophisticated form of consciousness that enables you to regulate yourself by  monitoring yourself, observing yourself and changing your thought processes and behaviors.

I loved all 11 of these and will be incorporating them into my future leadership trainings for REIC. What do our seminars and coaches always tell you when you get started? Real estate is hard. It really is. And actually, almost all of the most rewarding things in your life are going to be the hardest. These steps aren’t just 11 steps for success in the workplace or real estate. But for life.

~Josie De Leon

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