The Toronto Raptors won the NBA championship this year with the help of its superstar, Kawhi Leonard. For those of you who are not into sports, Leonard is a good basketball player and an even better person. He is humble, he is quiet and he is down to earth. His contract expired this year and instead of signing with Toronto, he signed to play with the Los Angeles Clippers. This was expected because he's originally from LA and he has always wanted to play there.
What was not expected was how he had strategically convinced another superstar to join him to play together in LA. I won't get into all the details, but Leonard shocked the basketball world by not only signing with the team that he wanted to play for, but more incredibly, he was able to persuade his new team to trade for the superstar with whom he wanted to play together. This brilliant move was unexpected because Leonard has always been a nice, quiet guy with a calm personality and nobody predicted that he would plan so meticulously to get exactly what he wanted.
One major factor of Leonard's amazing plan was that he is valuable enough to have sufficient leverage in the negotiations of the deal. He was successful because he didn't broadcast it publicly: he held his cards close to his chest and nobody had a clue what was going to happen. Leonard was able to operate behind the scenes and executed his move smoothly.
Now I'm not advocating for Kawhi Leonard to be our children's role model, but we can learn a lot from him. A person does not need to be arrogant, rude or manipulative in order to be successful; on the contrary, having a quiet confidence, being humble and sticking to your own principles can prove extremely fruitful. If our children see us personifying these values, they will learn to respect others, make clever plans and negotiate wisely. Getting a decisive leverage or advantage when securing real estate deals, job interviews, interest rates, etc are byproducts of smooth planning and skillful negotiating. Quiet confidence, quiet presence and quiet intelligence are valuable traits to develop in children that can lead to them making solid financial decisions in the future.
Check out this article detailing Kawhi Leonard's brilliant move. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to shoot some hoops!
