How to Get What You Want
Your career isn’t built by waiting for someone to notice your value. It’s built by learning how to advocate for yourself with confidence.
You’ve been told your work will speak for itself. Yet despite doing everything asked of you—and more—you’re still feeling overlooked and uncertain about your next step. Leadership isn’t just about managing a team; it’s navigating the complexities of internal relationships and consistently advocating for your growth.
On Get What You Want, Susie Tomenchok is your silent partner, empowering you with the mindset and tools to negotiate your career—and life—with intention.
Unlike podcasts that focus on climbing the ladder or hustle culture, this show is for women who want to own their careers authentically. You’ll learn practical strategies for everyday negotiations, from asking for what you deserve to confidently handling tough conversations. Because negotiation isn’t just for raises or promotions—it’s how you navigate every opportunity in your career and beyond.
Susie is a negotiation expert who understands the challenges of being in a male-dominated industry and the struggles women face when advocating for themselves. She’s helped countless professionals unlock their potential and will show you how to do the same.
If you’re ready to stop waiting for your career to happen to you and start creating the opportunities you want, hit follow and join Susie each week to build your confidence, advocate for yourself, and finally Get What You Want.
How to Get What You Want
Situational superpowers
Ever wondered how learning about situational awareness can turn the tide in your favor during negotiations? I've got you covered! Today I will help you understand the pivotal role situational awareness plays in becoming an effective negotiator. Join me to uncover the concept of space in a conversation, and how being conscious of the space you occupy can influence your audience's reception. We also delve into the importance of maintaining a balance in your contributions, so that your voice is heard, but not overpowering.
This episode is packed with key steps to take prior to entering any negotiation, and how to boost your environmental, personal, and interest awareness to influence the outcome effectively. Learn some practical strategies to identify the other party's needs, conquer your fears, and bolster your confidence. Tune in, and discover how to lead with leverage in your negotiations!
In this episode, you'll learn the following:
1. The significance of situational awareness in negotiation and leadership.
2. The importance of matching your contribution in meetings and conversations.
3. The power of asking questions and adding value to the discussion.
_____________________
🚀 Ready to Get What You Want?
Listening is great, but real change happens when you take action. Join my newsletter for exclusive negotiation strategies, scripts, and real-world case studies you won’t hear on the podcast. Sign up now at www.negotiationlove.com—it takes 10 seconds and will change how you view and negotiate forever.
📖 Continue Your Professional Growth with These Resources:
Get my Book: The Art of Everyday Negotiation without Manipulation:
www.susietomenchok.com/the-art-of-everyday-negotiation
Work With Me: Speaking, corporate training, and executive coaching:
www.susietomenchok.com/services
_____________________
Remember, negotiation is more than a skill—it’s a mindset.
💕Susie
www.linkedin.com/in/susietomenchok
Welcome to the Leaders with Leverage Podcast. I'm your host and negotiation expert, suzy Tomonczuk. It's time to be your own advocate and negotiate for what you really want out of your career, not simply the next role or additional compensation. I want to show you that negotiation happens each and every day so that you opt in and say yes with confidence. Together with other business leaders, you'll learn the essential skills you, as a leader, needs to become that advocate in growing your professional skills, to increase confidence, gain respect and become the future leader you're poised to be, and when you face a high-stakes situation, you're ready, no matter how high those stakes are. So let's do this. Let's lead with Leverage. Hi and welcome. This is Leaders with Leverage. I'm Suzy and I'm so glad you're here. Thank you for being here, and I mean that I have been hearing from people and I just love to think that I'm talking to some individual that I could help, so thank you for being here.
Speaker 1:I want to talk about situational awareness today, and the reason it's top of mind for me is I've been working with some people some clients, some executives that don't have great situational awareness, and so I've been having these conversations about making space in the room and really thinking about what is your intent beyond what the purpose of the meeting is. That goes beyond just the topic at hand. So I want to talk about that, because situational awareness is definitely it's something that negotiators always consider is looking at every aspect of the environment, the people that are going to be there, what are their interests, like all of those things, so that when you walk into a conversation or a negotiation, you are keenly aware of all of the attributes that are a part of the situation and that nothing surprises you. And so learning about situational awareness is being thoughtful about it. So what I mean is and let's just take it, it's most commonly we need to think about situational awareness when we're faced with a high-stakes situation. And now remember, a high-stakes situation could be anything from a difficult conversation that you're avoiding. It can be going into that meeting knowing there's going to be one person that's always asked a lot of questions or is hard to convince. It can just be a situation where the getting the other person to agree is going to have some kind of triggering thing for you, and so high-stakes is very personalized, and so I tell people when you can even identify a situation as high-stakes that allows you to say, all right, I better pay attention here. And then one of the things that to consider is having situational awareness, especially in high-stakes, because what happens is we do all this preparation for high-stakes, we think about what we want to ask for, we think about our frame, we consider if we want to anchor and we understand our floor and ceiling. You know, we understand all those things about the pieces of the pie or the leverage in play, but then we miss Just being aware in the moment. So I want to talk about what are some of the things to consider, because when we do all that prep, then we're so in our head we miss. Opportunities are in front of us and it's those seasoned people that have the ability to kind of zoom out and look at the situation in In objective way in the moment. And so being able to zoom in and zoom out allows you to see and have situational awareness.
Speaker 1:So one of my clients I was talking to the other day. I observed him, so we wanted some feedback on his situation awareness and what? One thing that I did notice is he tends to hold more space than everybody else in the room. So we talked about what does that mean. And so what happens is If, say, you're in a team meeting and your boss is asking for updates and you go person by person, so the first person that goes spends just a two minutes nobody's really counting the time, but let's just say about two minutes and then the next person takes about two minutes. Well, if the third person takes ten minutes, people start noticing that the cadence is a little bit Wonky, if you will, and if we all know the person that holds more space than they need to like, they make their point and they make it again, or they add too much context, and so we learn to turn them off.
Speaker 1:So having situation awareness might be to consider when you're talking in a meeting and everybody's kind of doing their own contribution, how much space am I taking and thinking about? I wanted to be about the same amount of time as everybody else, and not that it's not equal time, don't get me wrong, but you wanna like even it out. So it appears that you're holding the same amount of space. Now, this could change with different situations, but in just a normal kind of cadence meeting it's just something to be aware of. If you hear something in the background, my dog has the zoomies because she just ate. So please just ignore that because I'm going to.
Speaker 1:Okay, so the other part of making space and thinking about if your space is equal is if you're not speaking up, you're not being seen even though you're there. So it works both ways. Think about holding the same amount of space that everybody else does and contributing in the same amount. So if you haven't talked for a while in a meeting, try to add in your voice. In that and it was a great executive I did a program for his team and the one thing he said was my team shows up and they think that that's being seen, but they're not contributing. And I need them to understand that it's not just about showing up, it's about being seen, and that's what he meant is being thoughtful about your contribution. So that's a good parameter. What space are you holding? What do you need to add so that you have space, and do you need to decrease it so that it looks a little bit more balanced, because you don't want people turning you off or not listening to you, because they're used to you having just a long drawn up cadence. This might be hard for some people to hear, but it's important to think about, and you can give yourself some self-awareness by noticing that and thinking about how much space you hold. Hey there, Love this podcast. I'm taking 10 seconds out of this episode to ask you to leave an honest review. More reviews on the show help us to reach more professionals who are ready to lead with leverage. Now let's continue the conversation.
Speaker 1:Another thing that it builds great trust and influence in a situation where there's a lot of conversation it's a big meeting is to ask questions. So often this happens with teams. I see it all the time. People are waiting for the person in front of them to stop talking so that they can talk. So instead of I worked with the same person, instead of thinking about the next thing you're going to say, be listening and thinking about the next thing you're going to ask. I can't tell you how powerful. I mean I can tell you how powerful a question is, but it makes an impact and you might think that it's not heard, but it is. So don't always contribute. I'm not saying always ask questions, but add some color to somebody's. Or, instead of going to a different topic, add to that person's, say oh, I just want to add to what such this person said was such a good point and I want to add some more color to it. What that does is that supports your teammate and it allows you to increase your trust with them and your influence overall, because people notice that. So that second one is thinking about asking questions and then, instead of starting at something else that you want to talk about, how can you add to just do an and you know to that person's comment? Even if it's not right after you, you can always go back and shine the light on it. And Sometimes it's about really thinking what's going on here?
Speaker 1:What's the purpose if you didn't call the meeting? Being aware of is? Are we following the agenda? Is this meeting really serving the purpose that it was supposed to, or is it being hijacked by something else? Being aware of are the interests shifting in the room? So sometimes I just like to listen and and observe While I'm trying to figure out where my best contribution is going to be. So sometimes it's sitting back and and noticing if the meeting is serving its purpose or if it's gotten hijacked and it's moved on to something else, and whether you need to Rail it back in or just observe where it's gone and if you want to be a contra contributor to that, or you just sit back and see what happens. So those are just three things, so I'll go through those because I think it's important to to Get you thinking about it in that.
Speaker 1:So the first one is what is the space that you're matching and that you're filling, and Make sure it meets up with what other contributors are in that meeting. And Even if you're not at that level of other people, it doesn't matter. Don't let that get in your head, but be thoughtful about the space that you're holding. So Contribute more if your voice hasn't been heard and contribute less if you Notice that your cadence goes above and beyond everybody else's, and maybe that's a work in progress for you. Maybe you need to think about here's my point, here's why, and then, if you need to know more, ask me questions. So it might be a work in progress for you where you have to think about chopping, editing that space that you hold. So think about that. The second thing I said was really considering what you contribute and how do you support other people in the room by asking questions or Highlighting what they said, by Saying that was a really good point and then adding to it. So doing an and To what they said, that was really great. Let me just add this, because I think I really want to make sure that that I'm aware of that and then Taking some time during the meeting to kind of zoom out, especially if it's a long meeting and you're like, okay, so we still on track, what's going on here, being aware, having some Situational awareness about what are the politics here, who's really contributing, why are they?
Speaker 1:I think it's always really good from a internal political perspective to watch and observe who holds influence, why and and what. What. What reason are they holding space in that discussion? And sometimes you would make that choice in the moment to go, oh I need to lean in here and really be seen in this, or I'm just gonna like lean out when you have a valid reason, just not just because you don't want to, but you have a valid reason to kind of Stay out of the conversation because maybe it's politically charged or maybe you don't have space to put in there. So situational awareness is there's so many things to it and maybe I'll bring up some other areas or Perspectives on the topic of situational awareness, but what I want you to think about are those three things, and I would love to hear from you if you have some ideas or Questions about situational awareness, because that will just give me some great content to use To answer your questions.
Speaker 1:So if you have any questions about that and how you can get better at it, reach out to me. In fact, I'm on LinkedIn. I love to hear from you, so reach out to me. I love to get a direct message. It just makes my day. So if you want to make my day, reach out to me now. Tell me you listen to this and ask me what your question is. So with that, I'll let it go. I'll let you go. Thanks so much for joining me.
Speaker 1:If there is something on your mind related to leadership or how to develop your Negotiators mindset, reach out to me. I'm on LinkedIn, I'm always available for you and if you think somebody needs to hear this, that would benefit from considering their situational awareness. It's always a win-win. It makes them know that you're investing in them and it allows you to reach out to them and show them that, that you're making that commitment or that investment in them, and it's good for me. That's the other win, it's good for me. So, thank you, I'm. I'm so glad you were here. Thanks for being here and Until next time. I just know that I appreciate you.
Speaker 1:This has been Leaders with Leverage and I'm Susie. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Leaders with Leverage. If you're ready to continue your professional growth, commit to accelerating your career development and say goodbye to that anxious feeling in your stomach Anytime you need to advocate for yourself, then get my book the art of everyday negotiation without manipulation. In this book, you'll learn the essential steps to take before entering into any negotiation or conversation, any interaction. In your day-to-day. You'll discover what the other party really needs and be clear about what you're going after. You'll bust through your fears and boost your confidence and embrace that negotiation truly happens all around us. Head to the link in the show notes for more, and you can even get a bonus if you buy it today.
