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
The power of silence
Have you ever pondered the strength that resides in the quiet moments between words? This episode peels back the layers of silence in the sphere of negotiation and communication, revealing how this often-overlooked tool can shift the power balance and lead to more favorable outcomes. Through stories from the boardroom and beyond, we walk you through the nuanced art of silence.
We don't just stop at the negotiating table; this episode is a holistic call to action for anyone looking to refine their conversational prowess. Discover actionable strategies to integrate moments of quiet into your daily interactions, giving others—and yourself—the space to reflect and respond. As we navigate through scenarios both in high-stakes environments and everyday life, learn to harness the profound impact of silence. It's not simply a tactic, but a path to becoming a more attentive listener, a more intentional speaker, and ultimately, a person who cultivates deeper connections with those around them.
In this episode, I talk about the following:
1. The power of silence in negotiations and everyday life.
2. Practicing silence that requires intention and preparation.
3. The stop, start, and continue approach.
_____________________
🚀 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
Are you uncomfortable? Good, that's what we're going to talk about today the power of silence in negotiations and in everyday life. 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'll 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.
Speaker 1:One of my favorite topics silence. Oh, it's so frightening. I hear and talk to so many people about this phenomenon that is so hard to hold and it takes practice. It takes practice to put insert silence in a way that's going to be impactful. And the reason that silence is so important is because everybody likes to fill it, which means if you practice it, the other party is going to interrupt it, even if it's your silence. When you're done, and what happens in that silence is, yes, they may share something that they didn't intend to share, but they also can share something that you didn't anticipate. That might help you get to the end of the deal, because when you allow that space to happen, that person will unload kind of something that's happening up here and especially that's why, when it's unexpected to them, they don't really think about always, about what they're going to fill with that.
Speaker 1:I had a friend of mine who told me she's a defense attorney and she said her favorite strategy in negotiation is silence. And she said the only time it doesn't work is when it's the strategy of the other person, but otherwise it works every time. And what's funny about silence is it feels really awkward to us and if you've tried it before and you count to five, it feels like it's been 15, 30 seconds because silence feels that awkward and in fact it's hard for us to practice awkward silence. I try to help people go beyond that uncomfort into that area of awkward silence, and the best way to experience awkward silence is when you are just an observer of somebody else that's using it as a strategy. So try to put yourself in a situation where you can watch silence, see it in other people, and when you feel that awkward silence, you'll know. So silence is one of those things.
Speaker 1:And when I talk about listening, one of the things that the research shows is that we listen the least to the people that we know the most, and that's because we're so used to their cadence. We're so used to how they fill that space. So silence the reason I love it so much is it's not just a strategy in negotiation, it helps you be really present, it helps you really listen, it makes you very present and intentional in the moment as well, because when you do that, you're interrupting those regular cadences that people get used to, because we learn how we talk and we learn how other people do them. So silence allows that to be interrupted, it changes it, and when you practice that, when you insert silence and you interrupt that cadence, you make people think and so it also makes people feel like you really care and you trust them, because there's a phenomenon in like counseling and coaching, that when you get somebody to think through something, they feel really connected to you. So when you get people to think, you're helping them get something out that they need to and you're really actively listening to what they're saying. So practicing silence is a good human skill. That's the way I like to look at it.
Speaker 1:When we come back, I'm going to bring this home with two stories to illustrate how you can get what you want by practicing silence instead of words. 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:All right, now let me tell you about a story that happened to me. It was a few years ago when I was negotiating big deals and we were going into an existing client. We wanted to renegotiate our contract and the tricky part was that both sides knew that the value of the contract was not as high as when we first started the contract, but we wanted to keep the value at a higher amount. So it was up to me. My boss and my boss's boss were in the room and my counterpart, as well as her boss and their legal person was in the room as well. And I bring that up because the more people, the additional pressure that's added to the situation, because now you just have all these ears that are listening. So I went through, we had a few slides and I was really talking about the value of the services we provided.
Speaker 1:And then I got to the money slide and I had practiced that. I was going to say exactly how much money it was going to be and then I was going to practice silence because I knew it was going to take them off their feet. And I knew, because I knew her so well and I knew that I needed to not anticipate or be empathetic that I just had to say it and say it with confidence and then just stop. So I'll never forget it was $8.2 million. So I get to the money slide and I say and you can get all of this for $8.2 million. And it was so awkward in the room and it was so awkward up here. What we don't think about is what are we gonna do in that moment? We may have a plan to practice silence. My plan was I am not gonna say anything until somebody else speaks. So I filled my head. I kept telling myself the first one to speak loses, the first one that speaks loses. It gave me something to really focus on and I waited and it felt to me like Many, many minutes. I mean ended up getting that deal and it worked, and it was because Confidence is also illustrated through silence. And it wasn't that I felt confident, but it was that the other side felt the confidence because I wasn't filling the space with just words. You know how it is when, when somebody's nervous, when you're nervous, you know that you fill that space, and sometimes it's not with great value, and you can feel that on the other side, you can feel, when somebody has that tension in there, just kind of continuing on. So practicing silence gives that confidence.
Speaker 1:My friend recently told me about a situation as well when she was negotiating a car and it was a. It was a very specialized, she had Ordered it online and so there had been all this time of waiting and then she finally had to go in and do all of the very Detailed things to put the, the final contract together. And she said that she you know, once you've taken all that time and commitment. You almost feel like there's a real bias around. You feel like you need to move forward and she was really worried and focused on that, like she didn't want herself to just make a bad decision. If there was something Unexpected at the end that they were throwing in, that she was ready to walk away.
Speaker 1:But what she didn't realize that happened to her was that Something around the warranty was confusing to her and she wasn't sure, when they were explaining it, really what it was and she didn't want to feel she didn't want them to think that she wasn't smart or that she didn't know about the vehicle she was buying. So when they were talking about and asking her About the different points within the warranty, she said I didn't want to ask a question because I couldn't even come up with a question that sounded smart. So I kept just being quiet because I didn't know what to say and I was trying in my head to gather something together to ask some questions so that I could at least get more information. And she goes. It was really weird because I was so quiet. The guy got really nervous and he started giving in on the warranty things that he kept asking and pushing her to Want to get an answer on, and she said it was amazing. She said she just kept quiet and as she watched it kind of unravel, he was really unraveling, he was kind of losing his confidence because he didn't expect her to be so quiet. So he kept just giving her, giving in to all these things, and then she started getting her bearings and then was able to kind of talk through some of the final points. But it definitely went in her favor and she said I didn't even it was so funny to her because it was all about Her ego and how she was going to appear in that moment and so silence was her Defense mechanism so that she didn't ask a bad question. So pay attention to silence. If it's you inserting it, um, if it's the other person, it's really great to kind of watch that Going back and forth in any conversation, especially when there's intensity, when we're nervous, something that's high stakes doesn't have to be something that is, um, a lot of money or the one job that we have been looking for, that that we're negotiating.
Speaker 1:High stakes is anything that's important to you, and high stakes is important because there's an emotional tie to it. So when, when there's high stakes situations that you you face and there's emotion involved, you're going to be cloudy and you're going to want to fill that silence. So, in a high stake situation, in any situation that makes you nervous, have a silence plan. Think about the silence in the moment, take time to have awareness around it and, in fact, when we come back, I'm going to give you three tips to use, because you can't do this alone. Silence is hard. Three tips that you can use, starting today, to start integrating silence in your everyday negotiation situations. All right here. So here we go. Here are the three tips that you can use to integrate silence, starting now and not just this week.
Speaker 1:Think about how you're going to do this ongoing and sometimes, before you walk into a conversation, you have to remind yourself that you're going to pay attention to silence, especially if it's a conversation that's high stakes for you, that's making you nervous, emotional. Practicing silence has to be a real intention. So the first tip I'm going to give you is to really think about, like in my story, after, when you're going to practice silence, what are you going to say in your mind? Because it is going to feel uncomfortable, and that's why it's so important to practice, because you have to understand that uncomfort. And so, if you can count to 10. And I don't mean just one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, because you'll want to get through it quickly.
Speaker 1:Pause, breathe between you can use the old one Mississippi, two, mississippi, but get yourself to think about something, give yourself something to pay attention to in your head so that you don't accidentally interrupt it. But as you're doing that and you're feeling that, just also notice what's going on around you, notice how the other person reacts, but try to stay in it with those 10 seconds. And if they interrupt you and they feel the silence, great, if they don't at least start once you get to 10, then ask a question what is on your mind, and then just start there. So that's tip one, all right. So tip two and this is interesting because you don't normally think about the two sides of silence, and what I mean by that is we often think about what we're going to do when we're talking and then we stop, and we stop ourselves, especially when we're nervous.
Speaker 1:So practice silence in two different ways. The first way is when you're done and you practice it and you insert 10 seconds. The other place to insert silence is after the other person made their point or asked their question or said something, and maybe start out by just inserting five seconds and what happens is it is unexpected from the other side, so they may give you a little bit more content, they may linger on. Maybe they needed to say a little bit more. It's not that you're manipulating them, but it allows them to unload some other things that were a part of that, because you're allowing them to have more space. The other thing is it shows that you're really thoughtful about what they said, because that space makes them feel like you're really trying to understand, so you're really listening well to them. That's why I say it's such a great human skill, because it allows people to think and it shows and illustrates not only your confidence but that you're really connected and in tune to the conversation right there. All right for the third tip. This might feel unexpected, but it's really practicing silence with yourself.
Speaker 1:We all know how we get going in our day from task to task, from meetings to meeting, from conversation to conversation, and especially in this world where we're in person and virtual, we try to put so much together. We don't give ourself a lot of space to do that same, thinking and even applying silence after you've thought something through or you're taking some time for yourself instead of just moving on to the next thing you need to do contemplate. Is there anything else I want to consider with that? Because pushing yourself to have silence in your own thought process allows you to be more aware of actually make your brain have the ability to unload a little bit more, just like silence does when you practice it with other people. Self-awareness is something that improves our satisfaction of life and what we do, the only way to get better at self-awareness. We believe that it's something that we're either born with or not, but it truly is an art that you need to practice as we get up in an organization. Research shows that self-awareness goes down Understanding ourselves and having some moments for us will heighten our self-awareness and that satisfaction, but also help us make space to see what else that you can discover about yourself. Do silence for you and see what happens.
Speaker 1:Insert silence throughout your day. Put a sticky note up or something and say remember to apply silence for myself. All right, when we come back, we are going to apply the power of silence. I'm going to challenge you to start it today. All right, to the final segment, to talk about how we're going to start applying it now. I love this because, as an executive coach, it's great to get all this wisdom from things that people say, but it's really in the action, the implementation, that really creates the power, and, especially when we're talking, the power of silence, it's not really a topic that we think about applying.
Speaker 1:Let's first think about the stop. What are you going to stop doing? Now that I've talked to you about silence? I'm going to stop filling the silence. I'm going to stop filling it. I'll do that with the people that are the closest to me, because I think that that is where I'm not as intentional about it. What are you going to stop doing? What are you going to start doing? What am I going to start doing? I'm going to be a silence planner. I'm going to start thinking about in this conversation. I am going to allow there to be space. I am going to, when they're done making their point, I'm going to count to three. I'm going to start planning my silence. What are you going to start doing?
Speaker 1:And then the continue part what are you going to continue to do? I'm going to continue to talk about how important silence is, and I'm just going to talk about it more in my everyday to the people around me, so that they can start doing it too, just like that woman. I told you that she said the best the person that it doesn't work on is the person that's using it too. I want to see more people use it together, and that signals that you care about them. So I'm going to continue to talk about it. What are you going to continue to do? What have you done? Well, as it relates to silence, that you're like. You know what I love, what Susie said, but I know that I already do this piece well and continue to do that. Such a great exercise for us to think about on a regular basis. Stop, start and continue. And so, in this, what are you going to do? What are you going to commit to?
Speaker 1:This practice of silence is really powerful. You know I talked about those two stories, about how I faced it and how nervous I was and how I really needed to take up some space in my mind so I could hold that silence, and my friend who accidentally practiced it because she didn't know the right thing to say, but she saw the power of what happened when there was silence that was inserted, and then those tips that I gave you around how you can practice it now. So what are you going to do? What are you going to do now that you've had this adoption of negotiation, this thing about silence? Because that power of silence can be the thing that can make the difference in your next conversation, especially if it's a high stake situation, because it will click you in to being really present and it will allow you to hear what they're saying, because when you're being quiet, you have to be able to be conscientious about what they're adding to the conversation. So now go, make sure that you apply what you've learned today. If you want to know more about what I'm up to you want to get my book or just join my network go to negotiationlovecom. It's negotiation love, because I love negotiation and you should too. So negotiation love has all that. You need to learn more. I'm so glad you made the commitment to be here today and that you learned about the power of silence. If you want to know more about me, you can go to negotiationlovecom. You can find out everything about working with me or just getting in my network. I would love to have you a part of this journey. So until next time, I'm Suzy, and this has been adopting a negotiator mindset.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to this episode of Leaders With Leverage. I am so honored that you chose to spend your time with me. 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.
