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
It's not mind reading (it's listening!)
Have you ever felt like you're talking, but nobody's really listening? Join me to peel back the layers of negotiation and reveal how the power of active listening reshapes our interactions and outcomes. This episode is a journey through the heart of communication, where I'll share intimate stories and insights on being truly present—a skill that's transformative in both boardrooms and living rooms. We tackle the challenges that keep us from engaging fully with those around us and provide you with the keys to unlock deeper connections without compromising your position.
Here, you'll discover practical steps to elevate your listening game, turning every conversation into an opportunity for growth and understanding. I demonstrate how self-observation and thoughtful questioning can lead to more meaningful dialogues, fostering trust and demonstrating genuine care. These are the building blocks for becoming an influential communicator and negotiator. So, if you're ready to change the way you interact with the world, one conversation at a time, let's embark on this transformative path together.
In this episode, I talk about the following:
1. The importance of active listening in negotiation and everyday conversations.
2. Challenging oneself to ask more questions rather than focusing on what to say next.
3. Self-reflection and a commitment to continuous improvement in listening skills.
_____________________
🚀 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 Tomachuk. It's time to be your own advocate and confidently navigate what you want out of your career, not simply the next role or additional compensation. I want to show you that negotiation happens every day in plain sight, so you need to be ready to opt in and say yes with confidence. This happens by adopting a negotiator's mindset, and I'll show you how, together with other business leaders, you'll learn the essential skills and shifts in mindset you need to know. You will be empowered to naturally advocate for yourself and grow your professional skills, and while you're practicing along the way, you'll increase your confidence and gain respect, all while you're growing into that 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 it. Let's lead with leverage. Hi, I'm Suzy. I'm so glad you're here. I just want to remind you that I believe that adopting negotiator mindset is essential for personal and professional success, and so that's what we're going to talk about today. And people often ask me what is negotiator mindset? And the thing about it is we look at negotiation as something that's done to us, that is. It's manipulative, and so I believe that negotiation is a tool and not a weapon. So I want you to think about negotiation differently today. Think about it as a strategic way to navigate life, build relationships and think about your impact at work and at home. So let's just jump in.
Speaker 1:Today I want to talk about listening. You know, I remember as a kid my mom used to tell me me and my dad there's five kids in the family and I'm the fifth of five and she would always tell me and my dad that we were both good listeners. And I remember in my head going I don't want to be a good listener. Like that doesn't sound like. It's very easy, very hard to do. All you have to do is just be quiet. And it took me a long time to really appreciate that as a compliment. And now I really understand that listening is so underrated. We all know it's important, but we very few people do it well. And even as a coach, sometimes I'm one on one with people and they're paying me a lot of money to be there, and when I'm giving them some advice or talking to them, I can tell they're distracted or they're not really tuned into what I'm saying and it just baffles me sometimes that we believe that, whether we're stressed and we have so much to do and we have so many things going on in our head that we're not in the moment, that gets in our way sometimes and or just being able to think about what we want to say or what point we want to make, we get so in our seat.
Speaker 1:And the key to negotiation is to really get out of your head and into the other person's perspective, not to give them leverage over your point or not to give them any kind of insight to how they can use what they leverage against you. It's really to understand what are their interests. When we're good listeners, we're really great humans because we think about what's important to the other person. We think about their interests. We don't just think about what we want to say. Next, we consider what has been said.
Speaker 1:I want to give you some keys, some approaches to listening and how it relates to negotiation. It's so key. I'm so grateful now to my mom for telling me that I'm a good listener, because it made me be really conscientious of that attribute that I naturally have. I'll tell you, it is not something that is easy for me, especially when I'm triggered emotionally, when I'm talking to somebody and I'm frustrated with them or they're talking too slow or they're giving me too many details. I can tell you that people very close to me will tell you that sometimes I'll be like you know just get to the point and I'll try to help them improve their communication by giving it to me differently and sometimes giving people that space to let them communicate in the way they need to is helpful to them because they have the need to be able to get out what they need. Sometimes that's an emotional release for people to be able to really unload by talking. I know that, as an extrovert, that sometimes just being able to have the space to empty what is in my mind out, so that space is a luxury for me, and I get frustrated when people aren't good listeners to me. So I try to think of all those things when I'm listening to other people is to be really present, and so we'll talk about those keys of listening.
Speaker 1:I want you to think about listening. Do you know that we listen the least to the people that are closest to us, and that's because we get used to what they say, we know their cadence, we can anticipate. You know how long it's going to take them to say something. So we give them the proper amount of space. Then we start listening, right at the end, the tale of what they're saying, so that we can get to that space and be able to say, okay, this is what I want to say now. So think about the way you listen in a lot of different situations, because being a good negotiator is about understanding. Because in negotiation, if you're not listening to the next steps you need to take to get that person to say yes or to help them understand your frame, you'll miss an opportunity to get to the close. And along the way, by practicing this great art of listening, it's going to make you a better human, a better partner, a better leader, a better peer, a better parent.
Speaker 1:As I mentioned, my mom always said I was a really good listener. I think I took that for granted, especially really early in my career. It didn't take me long to think of a few examples of when I wasn't a good listener. This was professionally. I think I could find a lot related to my personal life. Just like the research that I said shows that we don't listen to the people that are closest to us. We pay more attention to the people we don't know, because we don't know what they're going to say or we don't know that much about them. I think maybe our curiosity drives our ability to be a keen listener. I remember we were negotiating and I was the main person that was doing the talking at the table. It was a big deal for us. There were a few people in the room and that's the only reason I know about this story, because I was not listening well enough. I missed a bunch of things that the other side said.
Speaker 1:Sometimes, when you prepare so well, you have to be a better listener when you get to the table, because if you prepare so much and you anticipate what the other party will say and you believe you know what their interests are, then when you get there, sometimes your ego gets in the way of being able to actually just listen, to hear what they have to say, because you are probably wrong about I guess not specifically wrong about their position, but there might be nuances to it that you didn't anticipate. Even taking the time to make the other person feel heard allows them to understand that you're not manipulating them. You're listening to them when you are right and you're the way that you had prepared for the negotiation goes seamlessly. If you signal to them that you're not even paying attention to them but you're kind of letting the negotiation happen without them, you're not going to have as rich of a relationship at the end, because when they don't feel like they've been listened to, then they will feel like they were taken advantage of and it might not even have been the case.
Speaker 1:Extroverts and introverts. The study shows that introverts and extroverts don't negotiate as well as the person that's right in the middle of those two personalities. The reason is and this is just true for great communication is that both parties need to be heard. An extrovert tends to and I'm one, so I can say this with clarity an extrovert tends to talk, and sometimes talk to think, filling the space when there should be some silence for the other person. Especially if you're not negotiating with an extrovert, being thoughtful about what are your natural tendencies? Because an extrovert feels like they just need to tell their story and they believe that they listen really well. They might be listening really well, but they're not giving the signs to the other side they've listened, because silence is something that signals that you're actually listening to the other side. An introvert tends to not tell the story enough, doesn't illustrate the benefit. They tend to listen more. It's a nice balance between the two. The best negotiators are ones that are amoeverts, which is a nice combination of being able to tell the story and to listen and illustrate to the other side that you've heard them.
Speaker 1:The negotiation that I remember specifically we had prepared for a few weeks. We knew exactly what are the things that we wanted in the priority list of what we wanted and I was going to be the lead on it. We had anticipated what their needs were and what their priorities were. I had been so practiced and we had done it all together that I kind of went into my the da da, da, da, da da. You know, I was like doing what I had practiced about making the value statements and helping them understand our position and showing that I had compassion and understood their side. Early on I was so in my head about how this needed to go, because I had rehearsed it so many times that I missed that. They gave us our second point really early on, so I just kept going and going and justifying it and they were letting me go and go and finally the person said we already gave that to you. I don't know what you're. And they kind of got frustrated with me because it was obvious that I wasn't listening to them. And you know that doesn't feel good when you aren't being listened to. It doesn't feel good. So the negotiation didn't go well. I think we ended up signing a deal but we didn't get the contract. You know the terms that we wanted. I got really flustered because of that and I wasn't confident and we got the bare minimum of what we wanted on service level, on agreement timeframe and on the revenue associated to it. And it was just because I missed a point that somebody had already given us.
Speaker 1:You know, in Chris Voss's book he's a FBI negotiator never split the difference he talks about during a hijack situation, when they're on the phone and he's negotiating with the hostage. The person that's the hostage is holding the people hostage. They have seven people on the phone. Think about that. Seven people can hear different things inflections, words that were used, maybe even like some of the nonverbals that you could hear and that he has them listen for all different reasons. That just blows me away to think.
Speaker 1:We believe that we listen really well, but there's so much we miss and especially the research shows too. When we are distracted by something like a noise or what is going on in our head, we tend to focus on that and we don't hear or we don't observe other things around us. So think about that for you. How are you gonna be a good listener when we come back? I am gonna give you three things that you can do or be thoughtful around being a good listener in the next week and listening is something that we sometimes take for granted, but I want you to take some time to think about who are good listeners around you and if you're being a good listener. So we'll go through three easy things that you can. Well, they're not easy, but there are three things that you can put in place this week in your next conversation, and it will just enlighten your awareness around. The listening part of the conversation, instead of the talking part, is where we always focus. So three tips when we come back. 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. All right, so three things that you can put in place right away Now.
Speaker 1:This art of listening has so many different tips that you could have, but I am gonna give you three that you should think about this week. So the first one is to think about and plan to be a good listener. The first one is look at a conversation that's coming up for you, and it can't just be just one, just a regular conversation of how's the weather kind of thing. It has to have an outcome that is of interest to you and a little bit of a challenge. But find one conversation that you're gonna have this week, let's just say in the next two days, where you can be an active listener, meaning like your intention is to go in and say, okay, I'm gonna challenge myself to listen more than I talk.
Speaker 1:And a good rule of thumb this is for leaders, so this can be implemented for anybody is to listen 70% of the time and talk 30% of the time. And I'll tell you, I have leaders, senior leaders, that will say to me I listen all the time. All I do is listen. I hardly ever talk, so that percentage of my listening is probably higher than 70%, and then I talk to their people and I'll talk to them over time and they'll be like my boss. They'll just happen to mention when they get on a staff meeting. All that he does is talk the entire time. And then I'll go back to that senior leader and they'll still have this impression. And it's not that they're yes, they're unaware, but they also just believe they're listening more.
Speaker 1:So do something to count how you listen. Or maybe you have your timer on your phone and you're not paying attention to it, but when you stop talking maybe you start the timer and see how long it is. Keep yourself honest around that. So that's the first one is observe yourself. How much are you listening in a regular conversation, not just a how's the weather conversation, but something that has a little bit of meat to it, something that has an outcome that's important to you. So the second one is to challenge yourself to repeat back some of the key points that the other person is saying. And you don't want to be obvious, you don't want to go into this and go. I'm working on my listening skills and so I'm going to repeat back what you've been saying.
Speaker 1:When you're talking to somebody, just out of the blue, just say, oh, that's really interesting. What I heard you said was that you've had a rough couple of days. But do you think that's from? Or just highlight something they said, and even a good one is to go. That's really interesting. I hadn't thought about the fact that if you get on your Peloton first thing in the morning, so repeat back what they said, that it forces you to listen so that you can put together something that it has to do with exactly what they said, because what our tendency is, if somebody says that and we go to our point, so we're bouncing back and forth and we're not allowing it to have kind of like, instead of it having dividers, like a clear what I'm saying, what you're saying, what I'm saying what you're saying. Think about it as being integrated. So say something about what they said and then make your point. So that's the second thing is to repeat back something they said. And then the third one and this one. This will help you with the second one too, but the third one is in your head as you are participating in this conversation.
Speaker 1:Catch yourself from starting to formulate what you're going to say in response to what that person is in currently saying, because, listen, we're starting to formulate what you're going to say. You're not paying attention to what they are saying at the moment. So, instead of formulating what you're going to say next, listen with intention, even allow there to be space and make your mind think about what you're going to ask to understand more. And, before you make your point, ask at least one question. That what that does is it shifts it. The other thing about that is, when we listen and we ask questions, it makes the other person really feel heard and they feel cared for. When we listen with intention, we are showing how much we care for the other person. We're building that trust, and so that's what's really important in a negotiation. That's key. People only like to do deals with people they know, like and trust. Good listeners exhibit those. It's giving those. They're showing you how much they care or that they trust you and they want you to trust them too.
Speaker 1:So the three are think about a conversation that's coming up and make the choice to actively listen. Pay attention to how much you're listening. Try to figure out what metric it is for you so that you can start, so you can know, you can baseline where you need to go to become a better listener. The second one is to challenge yourself to say back some key points of what that person said, to show them you want to deeply understand what they're saying. But just key on something and see if you can just be curious about it. Oh, that's really interesting. This is what I heard that you said, and restate what their point, that they made, and then it also makes them feel like you care about what they're saying. Wow, just imagine this.
Speaker 1:And then the third thing is to stop that mind chatter, stop thinking about what you're going to say next and focus on what you're going to ask next to know more. So curiosity is a key in this. One is how are you going to, what question are you going to ask next to that person? And you may need time to think, which is fine, and you can practice silence as a part of that too, all right. So this is where, as an executive coach, I have to challenge you, and I'll think through what I'm going to do as well, because the only way to put these things into practice is to find a way that can commit to how you're going to do it next. I gave you those three tips, but this means these are the commitments that you're going to make and what you need to do to change it up, because that's the only way to adopt it, and when you adopt a negotiator mindset and you think about these things, it becomes more natural for you. It might be something that you have to be really thoughtful about at the beginning, but these things just will start coming naturally the more you practice.
Speaker 1:So here we go. What is one thing you're going to stop doing? Oh, that's a hard one. For listening, I say my mom said I was a good listener. You might think that I just do it. Well, because I'm an executive coach and I've started to stop doing this and I'm really trying to hold my opinion or my advice and ask a question before I insert what I want or what I think would help that person. So I'm going to stop talking or giving my opinion. I'm going to first ask a question, so I'm going to substitute it with question. I'm taking one of my tips and I'm changing it a little bit. So what are you going to stop doing? What are you going to stop doing? From what I said, maybe it's listening better to the people around you, since I said the research show was, we don't. Maybe it's changing that metric, the 7030. So what are you going to stop doing? What are you going to start doing? What did I say today that you need to go? Okay, I need to start doing.
Speaker 1:I really like the tip about thinking about the next thing you're going to ask instead of the next thing you're going to say, and it kind of I'm cheating because it's what I'm going to stop doing. Stop was going to be I'm going to stop to give my opinion Start. I'm going to ask more questions. So I'm kind of using both of those. I think asking questions is so powerful and it really illustrates to people that you care and you're listening. So I'm going to ask more questions before I say anything else, and I'm also going to be more silent. I think I'm going to give myself two things ask more questions, I'm going to be more silent. So what are you going to start doing? What are you going to do differently?
Speaker 1:After hearing some of these things about listening, what came to mind for you? What are you going to start doing? I'd love for you to tell me. And then, what are you going to continue doing? You know we always are things that we do really well, so I'm going to continue. You have a lot of energy, as you can tell, when I talk to people and I'm pretty good at eye contact and I get the feedback that people feel really pulled in, and I think it has to do with my. I have an intention for people and I love to connect with people, so I'm going to continue that. I'm going to really have faith that that comes across as genuine and warm and I'm going to continue to do that. So what are you proud of yourself about? What have you been doing well? Who have you been listening well to? Those are all things to consider. So what do you stop doing? What are you going to start doing and what are you going to continue to do?
Speaker 1:You know listening is something as leaders, it's super important for us to be thoughtful about that. And sometimes, going into a meeting, instead of running the meeting, that is your meeting, that is a status meeting handed it off to somebody else and letting them run the meeting, changing up your habits so that you can kind of get to the point where you can't just stop and say, so that you can kind of like disrupt your own thinking, your own cadence of how this meeting runs or how this conversation goes. Let somebody else start first. So this art of listening is, I'm sorry to tell you, it's something you're going to have to work on for probably the rest of your life. I've had to and I know I'm still a work in progress, so please tell me your stories. I'd love to hear what your advice is, what really resonated for you today and what as you go through this next week or these next few days. I'd love to hear had this inspired you to make a change and have you seen some good outcomes from it. I'd love to hear from you If you want to learn more about.
Speaker 1:I have a book on the art of everyday negotiation without manipulation and I have an email that is called Monday Minute I send out every Monday. It's just about incorporating these mindset shifts so you can adopt a negotiator mindset, and they're just stories from my life. So if you want that, I have a website just for finding out more about my book or working with me or just joining the free Monday minute. I'd love for you to be a part of the network and I'd love to have you committed to adopting a negotiator mindset. You can find that at negotiationlovecom, because I love negotiation and so should you. So it's just negotiationlovecom and it'll have all the things you can click on if you want more information.
Speaker 1:I'm Sissy Tomacheck. I was so glad you were here. Thanks for watching or listening to how to adopt a negotiator mindset and remember negotiation is more than a skill, it's a mindset. Thanks for listening to this episode of Leaders With Leverage. I am so honored that you chose to spend your time with me.
Speaker 1:If you're ready to accelerate your professional growth and invest in defining the career you want, I have more resources for you. You can join my newsletter, where your inbox will love a Monday minute. It's an easy read where I share stories of how others are adopting a negotiator's mindset so that you can use these tips so that you can find success every week. And if you want to read my book, the Art of Everyday Negotiation Without Manipulation, I have a special offer just for my listeners. These links can be found in the show notes and if you want to work with me, there's more information there as well. I'd love for you to be a part of this movement to adopt a negotiator's mindset, because those who do create opportunities for themselves and they believe the investment is completely worth it. Head to the links in the show notes and just remember that I appreciate you.
