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
Developing a negotiators mindset
Imagine entering a negotiation with total clarity about your goals, a deep understanding of the other party's needs, and a bulletproof confidence to advocate for yourself. That's the transformative power of cultivating a negotiator mindset, and it's exactly what I will guide you through in this episode. We'll start by exploring the importance of self-awareness and recognizing our values and purpose.
This episode takes you deeper into understanding the needs of your negotiation counterpart and the necessity of clear, well-defined goals before any conversation, and weekly rituals you can start putting in place to work on your negotiator mindset. Get ready to lead with leverage and negotiate your way to success.
In this episode, you'll learn the following:
1. The significance of adopting a negotiator mindset in various aspects of life.
2. Three main components of self-awareness that are crucial for becoming an effective negotiator.
3. Weekly rituals you can implement to develop a negotiator mindset.
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🚀 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
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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. I am so happy that you're here. Thank you for being here because you're here. That's why I'm here. So thank you for showing up or just walking with me wherever you are driving with me. As you go through life, you continue to refine your purpose and your vision, and recently I've been talking about negotiation and how important it is to our every day. That's what my book is about just that if you think like a negotiator, then you will be better, because you'll be prepared and you'll be thoughtful. You'll know where you're going, and so I recently just was able to put it in words that make sense, and it's adopting a negotiator mindset is what leaders need to do. It's what we need to do. It's not that everything is a negotiation. It's just that when you have that lens, when you have those strategies, when you have this toolbox of things that you can apply to any situation, it makes you more intentional and thoughtful about your boundaries, about what you want, what your purpose is, what's important to you. It's thinking about the interests of the other party. I just got off a call with a client who said that she is so prepared for every. This is Monday, and she is prepared for every meeting because she spends time thinking about what does the other person need, and she cancels meetings if she doesn't feel like there's a purpose and that she is filling in something that is meaningful for the other party. I'm like Mike drop right there. So these rituals, these things that negotiators do, are so applicable in everything we do.
Speaker 1:So I wanted to talk about some of those ways to adopt a negotiator mindset and how powerful that can be in making yourself more satisfied. I have a friend who has become a friend, who has read the book and has listened to me and she said now, when I walk into a situation, I'm not as apprehensive because I have a plan. I won't get hijacked by what is your rate, or are you going to be able to do this for me? Where she said I would just answer the question in the moment and then regret it later. And she said and so I don't have remorse as much as I used to, and I think of it as this negotiator hangover that we look back and what if we would have asked this? What if I would have done this? And there's no. If you're clear on what you want, you don't have to worry about that.
Speaker 1:So I want to talk about some of the ways that you can get clear about yourself as negotiator, because even great negotiators don't call themselves negotiators. I have friends who negotiate for a living and they'll always say to me hey, suzy, next time you have a training or something, can I go? Because it's always like people want the next thing, the best tip. I want to make sure I apply myself. But the truth of the matter is just calling yourself a negotiator makes you that much further to being that, adopting that mindset, beyond those people that do it for a living all the time.
Speaker 1:So here's some things to think about. Number one is really knowing yourself, understanding, practicing self-awareness. That comes in forms of journaling, getting feedback, meditation, thinking about where you've come so you can be more intentional about where you're going. So thinking about, make space for yourself to practice self-awareness. I'll give you a couple of those coming up and thinking about what you value, what your purpose is, what might get in your way, where do you want to improve? What is your goal? So the foundation is knowing yourself. That's the thing, is being really clear about what's important to you. 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:We can listen to everybody around us who will tell us where they think that we could be best applied. But if you don't know for yourself, you're never going to feel fulfilled. So that's the first thing. The other thing is that external self-awareness that is how people perceive you in the way that you show up in your values and what's important to you, and so we're not always good at. External and internal self-awareness are two different pieces of self-awareness, and just because we're good at one doesn't mean we're good at both. So paying attention to what people say about us on the outside, I famously always say that we have a back of our head. We can feel the back of our head, we can see it in the mirror, but we cannot see it in real life. So understanding ourselves is like understanding our back of our head. We need to have all these different perspectives of it to know what it looks like, and we will never be outside of ourselves to be able to express that. And then the third thing is to have a ritual, building a self-awareness routine or a weekly routine to help you become a negotiator, because you're being intentional about that. So I'm going to give you a few ways of thinking about becoming having these rituals that will make you a better negotiator.
Speaker 1:One is Sunday strategy session. I'm going to give you three. I'm going to start with three Sunday strategy session. So dedicate some time on Sunday it doesn't have to be a lot, it could be five minutes where you look at the goals that you are coming up for the week, the meetings that you have, which ones are high stakes for you, which ones are low stakes, which ones may become high stakes, and just outlining what you want to get out of them and being thoughtful about what you need to do before that meeting, just taking as they said at Harvard, just taking 30 seconds before a meeting to consider the interest of the other party, will create measurably better outcomes. So Sunday strategy session is looking ahead at your calendar and thinking about what you need to do to be at your best in that meeting.
Speaker 1:Feedback Friday is also putting some time in your calendar on Friday, maybe at the end of the day, to look back what went well, what do you wish you would have prepared for? What was high stakes that you thought was gonna be just easy peasy, but it ends up being a challenge, conversation, meeting. What was that? And understand, maybe it was somebody. That kind of makes you sideways, that makes you insecure, that kind of takes away your excitement and be aware of that. So feedback Friday is looking back. Sunday strategy session is looking forward and then mindful Monday is just grounding yourself, understanding your value and getting that confidence that you need to get through the day, get through the week.
Speaker 1:We know that we're not alone in our struggle with self-doubt or insecurities, but we are not alone. I just got off with a group that I've been working with for eight weeks and somebody said the thing I learned about was we always tell each other that we have a shared experience. But it wasn't until I it's reminded. I'm reminded of it when I've heard, every week, people tell their stories about their own insecurities that are similar to mine. So, know, in those moments and those mindful Monday meditations, those five minutes where you just say I'm really good at this, I am excited about the week, even though this and this is gonna be challenging, I am enough, I value my contribution, this is where I'm really great. That will allow you to really not doubt yourself in those moments where you have to show up, in those high-stakes situations, whatever that might be for you and know that you are enough.
Speaker 1:Keeping your value up allows you to have confidence continuously, but it's something we need to remind ourselves of In my TED Talk I talked about. You have to every day put on an invisible sign I am, I value this about me. And on Mondays, I want you to like take that invisible ink and then invisible sign and put it up in a power pose over you and say I value my ability to connect with people or whatever that is for you. So the things that I want you to think about, to become to adopt that negotiator mindset, is one Sunday strategy session looking ahead. Prepare that's prepare. Right In the negotiation, it's all about being prepared Well. Sunday strategy session is getting you ready for that week coming up.
Speaker 1:Two is feedback Friday. Just like in a negotiation, only way you're gonna get better is to look back at what you did well, what you didn't do well and what do you need to adjust. So feedback Friday is looking back on your schedule. Even look at your calendar and go oh, that's right. Okay, that wasn't great, this was good. This was unexpectedly. I really rocked it. So what do you need to look at and what do you need to adjust? And then mindful Monday meditation what on Monday morning? Set aside some space to really celebrate yourself, acknowledge out loud what you're good at, so that you will increase your confidence in your own unique values, the things that people see that they already appreciate about you. Appreciate that for yourself. So the rituals to think about to become a negotiator and, by the way, start calling yourself I'm a negotiator every day and I practice this so that I am always constantly adopting a negotiator mindset. Sunday, strategy session feedback Friday and mindful Monday meditation whatever that meditation is for you, we're celebrating you. I hope this was helpful. I would just so enjoy hearing what your takeaway is from this and what are you going to commit to do on Sunday, monday or Friday, as I've outlined here. What is your ritual to become that negotiator that is already inside you that will make you purposeful, intentional, confident and without remorse, if you have a plan. Thanks for being here.
Speaker 1:This is Leaders with Leverage. I'm Suzy, tom and Chuck, and I'd love for you to follow me on LinkedIn. Reach out to me, give me your question or your comment so that I can bring that wisdom to this platform as well. I'll share this with somebody that needs to hear it and just know that I appreciate you for being here. Thank you so much for sharing your day with me.
Speaker 1: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.
