Why Agents Disengage – And How to Fix It with Lauren Holland and Mie Yamashia

Struggling to get your agents to consistently show up and take action? In this episode, Lauren Holland sits down with Mia Yamashita, Director of Team Productivity at Reside, to break down the psychology behind agent disengagement. Together, they explore why accountability isn’t about micromanaging—it’s about setting clear expectations, reinforcing standards, and fostering a culture of trust and ownership. From overcoming fear and self-doubt to implementing effective systems that drive results, this conversation delivers actionable insights you can immediately apply to your team. Whether you’re a team leader, coach, or real estate professional, this is the leadership episode you don’t want to miss!

Chapters:

• 00:00:00 – Kicking off with leadership, accountability, and what makes agents tick
• 00:00:28 – The real reason your agents aren’t showing up—and how to fix it
• 00:01:18 – Meet Lauren & Mie: Your guides to building a high-performing team
• 00:01:45 – Why agent engagement is one of the biggest headaches in real estate
• 00:02:16 – The secret to unlocking agent productivity (hint: it’s not just hard work)
• 00:03:41 – Fear and overwhelm: The hidden roadblocks killing your agents’ success
• 00:06:52 – Why some agents ghost you—and how to bring them back in
• 00:11:37 – The fine line between accountability and micromanaging
• 00:13:39 – Real-life agent transformations: What actually works
• 00:16:27 – Setting expectations that agents can’t ignore
• 00:21:58 – Stop letting your agents fail—why tough love is the best love
• 00:24:08 – Strong boundaries = better results. Here’s how to enforce them
• 00:25:05 – How to build trust so your agents actually listen
• 00:26:17 – What to do when your agents keep skipping meetings
• 00:28:08 – How to create a culture where agents WANT to show up
• 00:29:22 – The key activities that separate top agents from the rest
• 00:32:41 – Are leads overrated? What really makes a team valuable
• 00:39:00 – No more excuses! Systems that drive real agent success
• 00:43:33 – Final takeaways: Leadership, recruiting, and scaling like a pro

Links and Resources:

• Reside Platform
• Reside Platform Website
• Mie on LinkedIn
• Lauren on LinkedIn

Thanks so much for joining us this week. Want to subscribe to the Reside Platform Podcast? Have some feedback you’d like to share? Connect with us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube to leave us a review!

Episode breakdown: getting agents to show up

Lauren Holland, Reside’s Director of Team Operations, and Mie Yamashita, Reside’s Director of Team Productivity, took over the podcast to answer a question team leaders ask constantly: how do I get my agents to show up and do the activity? Mie has trained and coached agents in the thousands. Her answer starts with the leader, then moves to clear numbers, consistent follow-through and the support agents need to do the work.

Check your standards and systems before you blame the agent

When an agent isn’t engaged, Mie looks at the leadership first. Are the standards communicated well and kept in front of people? Do the systems actually support them? If she tells agents to track their numbers, she asks whether they have a place and a system to do it. Only after she can answer yes does she ask what’s getting in the agent’s way.

She rejects the idea that the agent just doesn’t want it enough. Most agents walked away from some kind of stable job to get into the business, which is a big leap.

If someone is not doing something, something is in the way of them wanting to do it.

Mie Yamashita

Report the number, with no story attached

Rejection pushes many agents into avoidance or people-pleasing. A common version is skipping lead generation and then reporting inbox zero instead. Mie’s fix is a hard rule for reporting: no stories. If she asks how many consultations an agent had, the answer is the number. A zero gets reported as a zero, and the agent lives with that for a moment.

From there she gets the agent into small, consistent action, starting with one call and building on it. The goal isn’t to make the discomfort go away. It’s to build a higher tolerance for it, so the agent learns they can feel it and keep going. She reminds leaders that most of their agents won’t share their own tolerance for rejection, and that doesn’t make them weak performers.

Make a generous assumption, then hold the boundary

When someone misses a meeting, Mie’s first message is always some version of “Is everything okay? I noticed you weren’t on the call.” She doesn’t lecture. She sets the expectation and says she trusts they’ll be there tomorrow. If they miss again, she gets curious about whether something serious is going on or whether they’re avoiding the work. In RISE, an agent who is sick gets the recording and a role-play assignment, so the expectation stays in place on a schedule that works for them.

Repeated threats without follow-through are what she calls loving someone into failure. It tells the agent the behavior is fine with you and costs you their respect. Her rule in class is that agents must be on camera. If they’re not, she removes them from the call without any punishment beyond missing the value. Suneet makes a related point about standards in team culture is what you tolerate.

Accountability is saying, I notice what you’re doing because I care about your outcome.

Mie Yamashita

Define showing up in numbers

For agents without production, Mie wants a minimum of two hours of lead generation a day, with 10 contacts and four to seven conversations over two minutes, five days a week. That works out to roughly 20 to 35 two-minute conversations a week. If a team is doing the activity but still not producing, that’s where she looks for the skill gap the leader needs to train.

Showing up also covers meetings, events and entering numbers. Top producers still attend because their wisdom is part of what they give the team. If one says they’re too busy to log conversations, she suggests talk-to-text sent to a VA. For attendance she uses an 80/20 rule and budgets 48 weeks a year, and she likes admins tracking it so conversations rest on numbers rather than “you always” or “you never.”

Hey, love you, mean it, come back as soon as you can be on camera.

Mie Yamashita

Give agents the lists and the leverage

Lauren speaks directly to admins and operations staff. If the team has a call night, agents should already have trackers and call lists in front of them. That can mean door-knocking lists, circle-prospecting lists, expireds or past clients. Mie adds that if agents pull their own lists, the leader has to confirm they know how and then check that it happened. Saying it once and walking away is poor leadership.

Leads aren’t the only source of activity. In RISE, agents add five people a week to their database from open houses, networking or anywhere else they meet people. Mie’s closing advice is to keep recruiting, because people will leave and grow no matter how well you lead.

Key takeaways for team leaders

• Before you question an agent’s drive, confirm your standards are clear and your systems let people meet them.
• Take reports as numbers only. No stories.
• Open with “Is everything okay?” and then follow through on the consequence you set.
• Write down what showing up means for your team, including daily lead generation and conversation targets.
• Have admin track attendance so accountability conversations start from data.
• Remove barriers by preparing lists ahead of time, and check that the work got done.