By Brian Summerfield, Online Editor, REALTOR® Magazine

Do you have a rival (or rivals) in your business? Either friendly competitors or professional adversaries who, if you don’t top them in a cutthroat battle for greater annual sales volume, will make you lose sleep for the next few months? Does that rivalry make your performance better or worse?

LeBron James (Flickr Creative Commons)

I’ve been thinking about this in the wake of “The Decision,” the televised announcement of NBA top dog LeBron James’ choice to leave the Cleveland Cavaliers play for the Miami Heat a few weeks ago along with fellow superstars Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. He explained that he made the move to win an NBA title that he wasn’t able to get during the previous seven seasons in Cleveland. (For those of you who don’t follow sports at all, these three players would make anyone’s top 10 list — and a lot of top fives — of the best in basketball today. To put it another way, it would be something like Eric Clapton and Keith Moon leaving their bands to join The Beatles in 1968.)

Shortly after “The Decision,” Michael Jordan, widely acknowledged as the greatest basketball player of all time (and possibly the most intense competitor in the history of pro sports), said that during his playing days, he wouldn’t have “called up Larry [Bird], called up Magic [Johnson], and said, ‘Hey, look, let’s get together and play on one team.’ … I was trying to beat those guys.” Additionally, former player and current basketball TV analyst Charles Barkley said LeBron will “never be Jordan. This clearly takes him out of the conversation.” Continue reading »