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
Crafting your BATNA
Unlock the strategies that can turn you into a negotiation powerhouse, as I guide you through the intricacies of BATNA—your secret weapon in any bargaining scenario. Imagine entering every negotiation with the confidence that you hold all the cards. That's the kind of transformation we're talking about here.
From career-defining moments to everyday transactions, I'll share personal tales and expert insights, equipping you with the tools to craft your best alternative to a negotiated agreement. It's not just about winning; it's about creating a dynamic where you dictate the terms from a position of unmistakable strength.
In this episode, I talk about the following:
1. Having alternatives as key to reducing emotional attachment to a single outcome.
2. Learning to say no, particularly when you have viable alternatives, as a powerful strategic tool in negotiations.
3. Identifying alternatives and applying negotiation strategies in different situations for personal and professional growth.
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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
Today, we're going to talk about the biggest concept that will give you the most leverage in any conversation or negotiation. Pretty juicy, right? 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. All right, I am super excited about this concept that I'm going to talk about today. It is the key to any negotiation. So, if you think about this, in a lot of different applications I'll give you some examples this will be the differentiator for you and it's about having alternatives and I knew this was important because I felt it in my negotiations and I really started thinking about it and expanding the idea of the alternatives in a lot of different situations that I faced and it was great for me. When I went to Harvard last year to take a negotiation course, it was one of the foundational pieces that they started the entire couple days in discussing and making sure people understood what it was and so thinking about alternatives. They Harvard actually William Urie coined this acronym and it's called BATNA and it stands for the best alternative to negotiated agreement and it's all about alternatives. So when you hear people talk about their BATNA, they're talking about what would happen if I didn't get what I needed in this negotiation. What are the other things that are at play? And he dives into this concept in his book Getting to yes and Not Giving In. So check out that book. It's one of the first really known books on negotiation and these concepts are ones that people use in really formal negotiations BATNA best alternative to a negotiated agreement.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about those alternatives. What does that really mean? So you know when you have, when you're going for something and you really want it so much it's the only thing you can focus on. You begin to be a little bit just single focused on getting that, and that's great. That helps you get really clear about where you're going. It helps you really understand what's important to you, which are important aspects of any negotiation, any difficult conversation, any even engagement that you have with another person. Being clear about where you're going is really important, and when it's the only aspect that you're focused on, then that doesn't give you a lot of opportunities to consider other things, and when you have alternatives, what it does is it decreases your emotion about that thing.
Speaker 1:Think about this. Consider that you have a great job and you love what you do. You love the boss you work with and you love the people you work around and you are compensated well. Well, if somebody came to you with another job, you were like, oh, that's kind of interesting. You might consider it and because you love what you already do, you might just ask for double of what you make, or ask for a three day work week. You might even ask for five months of vacation. It might be crazy to think about, but because you're so happy at what you're doing. The sky's the limit.
Speaker 1:On the other thing, because it's not, that alternative to what you're doing today is not that important to you, and so, if you get it, you're trying to define what are all the things that would just be like. So you make you giddy about it. So thinking about that alternative gives you just this ability to be confident in what you want. And the other side of that coin is when you consider if you were out of work, you had gotten so many nos and somebody offered you something that wasn't quite what you wanted and it was less money than you wanted. Because you didn't have another alternative and because you felt so down there wasn't a lot of opportunities for you, you might just say yes, without even thinking about what are some other options that you consider. So having an alternative is powerful. It's powerful even if you don't have to move to it, but it's important to define. So when we come back, I'll give you some examples to get you to start percolating some ideas of how this is applicable for you and your everyday. We'll be right 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, we're back again.
Speaker 1:This concept is like my favorite because it is so impactful. So I'm going to give a couple stories of when I felt the most impact, when I had alternatives, and the first one's going to be job related. I was working for a firm, a consulting firm, where I was really happy. I loved what I did and it was challenged, the people were really great and I was compensated well. I had all those things I talked about in that last segment and I had a friend of mine that I was very close to that had a startup that she wanted me to work for, and she was super excited about having me there. We get along really well. It would be a new challenge for me.
Speaker 1:The difference between the two offers were really really different, because one I was compensated well, the other one had challenge and I loved the product. And it was really funny because it was one of those moments where I was like I don't always have a lot of great alternatives and so I took a moment. I loved both of those. It was something that was difficult for me to make the decision on, because both alternatives were great, but I really felt, like you know, it was my choice to make, and so I called my dad to tell him that I just want to take this moment and time and say I have these two great things, that either way I'm going to be really happy and satisfied around, and I want to just take a moment to be really clear to decide which one's best for me. And I want to celebrate this moment, because we don't always have great alternatives and I tell you that story because sometimes alternatives aren't exactly what you want. But even having a little bit of glimpse of what your plan B will be, which allows you to, in the moment, really think about, is this the right decision for me?
Speaker 1:The other example that came to mind as I was thinking about what I wanted to talk about these alternatives I was flying yesterday out of New Jersey. They happened to have a really, really bad snowstorm and I was finishing a big engagement, getting off the stage, literally, and having exactly two hours to get to the airport and I would be really pushing it. I had a car to return. I had all these things I needed to do fill it up with gas. Time was going to be of the essence and everything had to go exactly right and I knew that knowing that would make me stress the entire time. So I thought, all right, what are my alternatives? I'm going to take some time to consider what is going to happen if I don't make that flight. So I did some research on what flights would be available, how many seats they had. That would make me feel like all right. If I got there late, if I missed it, what would my alternatives be? And keeping it, getting really clear about it and doing that research. It was important to me because conceptually you could say you were going to a big airport and you likely would have had a lot of different options, but because I took the time to really map out what my alternatives were. I literally on the highway getting to the airport, trying to go fast because I did want to make that first flight. I was like you know what, I can just go in and just feel really confident that if I miss that first flight I will go to the plan B. So it happens just in everything and just taking that time to go all right. What are my alternatives?
Speaker 1:And then the third situation that I was thinking about, having alternatives brought me back to talking to a client who was telling me that she wanted to take on this project that her boss was offering to her and her peer and it was up to her to go to the peer and help them, to help the two of them together decide who was going to lead the project. And she didn't really get along with this peer that well they. He was kind of a little bit pushy and always got his way. So she was really nervous about it because she really Wanted to get this project and she wanted to kind of like bully him into letting her have it. But instead she thought about what are the alternatives for him, what would make him happy. So in the conversation because she had thought about, she thought about her alternatives, you know, what are some other things that she could ask of him if she allowed him to take the lead. She also thought what was important to him and Because he wanted to win, she knew that that would be a really great angle for him and he hadn't thought about some of the things that were important to him. So when they were talking about the role of this project. She highlighted some other things that were coming down the you know that would be an opportunity for him that would give him the same exposure, the same challenge and really light him up. And she got the project because she was able to show him that she was thoughtful about what he wanted. She highlighted to him what would be the benefits of that alternative for him and he felt really good walking away and she got what she wanted.
Speaker 1:So alternatives and exploring those are incredibly powerful. So consider your bat na and the alternatives of the other party those examples, as you can see, just taking a moment especially when it's a high-stakes situation, something that's really important to you what are your alternatives? Explore those, even if they're not exactly what you want to do. It allows you to see and be objective in the moment, because then you don't feel like you're stuck if you don't get what you're going for in that conversation. So when we come back, I'm gonna give you a few tips that you can use right away to start thinking about Identifying the alternatives in any high stakes or even low stakes situation that you face this week. We'll be right back All right, so let's jump into the application.
Speaker 1:So the first tip I want to give you is it's around that first one that I said about going to the airport. It's Looking at every situation and scenario, especially for yourself is what are my alternatives? And Thinking and doing some investigation to get really deep on that. So, before you go into any, any conversation or just identify, I feel a little triggered by what's coming up for me. I feel a little nervous about this situation. What are my alternatives? I could not get my flight at all. I could find a different flight, you know you could. Your alternative could be I'm not gonna take my car back, I'm gonna take an Uber instead. So there are a lot of different ways to look at it. Might not be the way you go, but even going down that investigation Gives you some peace to be able to go All right. If this isn't go right, here are some alternatives so that when push comes to shove, when that you miss that flight, you aren't just blank-minded about what you're gonna do. It's like you have this plan that you can just put into practice right away.
Speaker 1:So my first tip is to, in any situation, consider One or two alternatives to what your end, your clear end, is that you want for that situation. So that's tip one. Now tip two I All right. So the second tip is to consider if you're going to tell the other party what your alternatives are or if you're considering their alternatives. You're going to tell them what their alternatives are. What that does is it signals to them that you're being really transparent and you're saying, like you know, I have this opportunity as well, and so I'm trying to consider which is most important to me that gives them that idea that you don't have to say yes to what they have offered to you, and it makes them consider for themselves what are some options for them so that they're not stuck in the one thing that you're talking about. The one end that they assumed was what the goal was for both parties. So when you go in, think, what is the benefit of me sharing my alternative or theirs? The example I gave about that client that was working with her peer on that project she decided to share the alternatives that he had and that allowed her to give him the opportunity to see that he wasn't just stuck in one outcome, but his other outcome was beneficial to him. So the tip two is consider if you're going to expose the alternative you have or that the other party has Now on to tip three. All right, so tip three, this is a good one and it's a challenge for all of us. It's when you have an alternative.
Speaker 1:Consider saying no from time to time to the one that you're assuming. Go to your alternative if it's good. It's a great practice to do and the reason it is is it's enlightening to see what happens to the other party for the other party when something unexpected happens to them. That's a great learning experience for you. But it also gives you that muscle, start, that skill to really identify what's important to you and be able to say no to something that might be not the right path for you. And this is not easy to do, you know, when I think about the example that I used when I had both of those alternatives for my next step in my career, I could have gone either way and I essentially said no to one side. And it was hard to say no. And I knew that because both alternatives were really great for me and I had to. I actually thought through saying the no first because I knew that was going to be really hard for me, so that I could say the yes and kind of save that as my reward for having gone through that saying no and telling them why I had to be really thoughtful about how I was going to deliver that so that I didn't mess up that relationship. But it was also a learning experience for me to be able to deliver that in the way that I was really proud of and that I retained that relationship for me.
Speaker 1:So have a plan and, from time to time, make the decision on how you're going to say no, how you're going to deliver it and what's really important to you. When we come back, we're going to really talk about the application of how you're going to make this stick for you, starting right now. All right, this is where the rubber hits the road. As an executive coach, I can give you a lot of great insights, but it's up to you to activate, to take action and make something valuable come out of what you've learned today. So this part is stop, start and continue. What are you going to stop doing, what are you going to start doing and what will you continue to do? Because sometimes we're doing some great things that we need to give ourselves some celebration around so that we continue to do them. So the first one is to stop. What are you going to stop doing as it relates to alternatives? What are you going to stop doing?
Speaker 1:I guess for me, when I think about alternatives, it's hard for me to tell the other person what my alternatives are. It's so easy to think this is an anomaly. This is not a situation where there are a lot of alternatives. So I'm gonna stop thinking that way and I'm gonna take the time so I'm gonna start. That leads me right into the next piece. I am going to start making myself identify three alternatives, and one has to be favorable enough that I would consider taking it, but I'm gonna make myself at least identify three. What that will do is it will force me to expand and be creative about it and then even be able to see what's on the fringes that I might not have considered. If I make myself think of more than just one, or even of two, or even of two, it makes me really expand my creativity to identify something. So that's what I'm gonna start doing, and what I'm gonna continue to do is I'm gonna continue to help other people see how important this is, and so I'm gonna continue to talk about this in a lot of different situations I'm in, but also pointed out to people as a way of helping them understand what a big piece of leverage this is. So it's important for people to see it, because it's a powerful way to get through what you need to, by understanding the entire landscape of the situation.
Speaker 1:This is a powerful one, your bat na. It's something that, when we consider it, we understand what is all the aspects on the table. Really think about. Look at your week that's coming up. What are the different situations that you're facing. Make sure that you're really clear about the outcomes that you're pushing toward, and not only clarity for you, but when you move into that conversation, that situation, make sure you frame it in a way that the other party is clear as well. And when you take that time to prepare so that you're clear about where you're going and you consider the outcomes, the bat na, the alternatives that are at play for you and the other party, it's super interesting. What it does is it enlightens this creativity for both sides. And when you open up that conversation, it signals to the other party that you're interested in having yourself and the other person come to an outcome that will be beneficial to both. And when you identify and show these different options for both of you, it makes them think creatively as well, so it becomes really powerful.
Speaker 1:And the secret to all of this, too, is that that builds trust, that really invests in the relationship, and at the end of the day, when we're negotiating, it's a conversation between two people, and there's very few negotiations or conversations that aren't important to the outcome of that relationship, and that's the key piece. That's why these things are so important, and being really thoughtful about that relationship all the way through is essential, because the only time we're not negotiating in a way that is beneficial to the relationship is when it's those one and done times, maybe when you're buying a car or you're purchasing something that the person on the other side you're not gonna have a long-term relationship with. But for every other situation that we face multiple times during our week, those relationships are important to us. It could be with our partner, it could be with our peer, it could be with our kids, even our parents. It's so important for us to think about the relationship at hand and having alternatives for us, and considering them really shows our commitment to considering what they're facing, putting ourselves in their seat and expanding the creativity so that we can get to the end that we want as well.
Speaker 1:I hope this was helpful to you. I would love for you to continue this journey with me. You can go to negotiationlovecom. There's a whole page of ways that you can either work with me, follow me or just join my Monday Minute newsletter that is just along these lines of tips that can help you take on that mindset of a negotiator, because it makes us a better human, makes us a better partner, makes us a better leader when we think in these ways.
Speaker 1:I'm Sussi Tomacheck. I'm so glad you were here, either watching or listening. Until next time, remember that a negotiation is more than just a weapon. It's a tool of ways to get the end that is clear for you and to make all parties feel that they were a part of the journey. Thank you, I'm so glad you joined me today. If you want more, head to negotiationlovecom and remember negotiation is more than a skill, it's a mindset.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to this episode of Leaders With Loverage. 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 wanna 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 wanna 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.
