Negotiating with success
Negotiating with success
26 January, 2 February & 16 March 2026, 09h - 17h
General context
Negotiation is an essential skill in research and professional collaboration. Whether you’re discussing project timelines, resources, authorship, or team responsibilities, effective negotiation helps build trust and long-term partnerships.
This workshop focuses on both the mindset and the tools required to negotiate with confidence and integrity. Participants learn to recognize their own negotiation style, understand the dynamics of influence, and develop strategies to reach sustainable, win–win outcomes. Through interactive exercises and real-world simulations, the course helps participants move from positional bargaining to constructive, interest-based negotiation.
By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:
Identify the characteristics, strengths, and risks of different interaction styles, including conflictual and cooperative approaches.
Use effective questioning techniques and both verbal and non-verbal communication strategies in negotiation scenarios.
Analyze the negotiation process and recognize key stages and decision points.
Prepare negotiation strategies by defining clear objectives, prioritizing interests, and identifying flexible outcomes.
Formulate proposals and agreements that reflect mutual interests and lead to sustainable partnerships.
Assess their own negotiation style and apply collaborative techniques to improve long-term effectiveness and relationship quality.
VIB Group leaders, staff scientists, project managers, postdocs and PhD students in years 3 & 4 - maximum 12 participants.
Wonderful training. Exceeds expectations in all ways. Highly recommended. One of the two best trainings I've followed in 12 years at VIB/UGent (the other was by Melissa Davies too, by the way).
Participant edition 2025
The whole approach of the training was very different from what I expected, but overall it was an eye-opening course that completely shifted my perspective on negotiations.
Participant edition 2024
I think that Melissa is a wonderful trainer. She does not only know and have all theoretical skills, but she is also so good in telling or presenting them, while she recognize the needs/question of the trainees and pick in on them very accurately. I also appreciated that Melissa had a broad background on topics not directly related to negotiation (e.g. conflicts, empathy,...) , and could explain those/improvise when relevant.
Participant edition 2023
Trainers
Melissa Davies
Negotiation specialist and Solution Focused coach
London School of Economics (LSE) graduate Melissa Davies has held operational and strategic management positions in several international and national companies before becoming an international consultant. Her fields are organizational development, partnership brokering and negotiations, people development (self leadership and capacity building) and project management.
Melissa is an independent professional negotiator who founded Negoservices Sàrl in 2000. With over 30 years’ experience in negotiating agreements and building lasting partnerships in varied environments, she trains in negotiation skills and conflict management. Customers include academia, scientific research institutes, the private sector (multi-nationals and SME) as well as non-profit organizations. Her book The Practical Negotiation Handbook A Five Step Approach to Lasting Partnerships was published in 2021 and has been translated into several languages. Melissa also specializes in self-leadership skills so as to positively influence our relationships with others, including how to “be” (posture) in conflicting situations and in negotiations.
A qualified Solution Focused coach, Melissa helps people and organizations in their professional and personal development to better face their challenges and to get to where they want to be. Melissa intervenes in several European programs for women leaders in science. She also has a long experience in coaching teenagers and young adults, as well as working with scientists (PhDs, Postdocs, Gls/PIs).
In 2022, Melissa was selected as one of the Career Women’s Forum top 40 inspiring women who have been active in the professional, political, and social fields in the French speaking part of Switzerland these last 40 years.
Melissa is passionate about mountains, nature and wildlife conservation. Member of two mountaineering clubs, she is very active with teenagers and young adults. Melissa is interested in sustainable development and social issues; she volunteered for several years as a senior partnerships officer for Norlha, a grass roots NGO involved in sustainable development projects and empowering women in the Himalayas. She also volunteered in 2022 in Bidibidi, a refugee settlement in Northern Uganda, working on conflict transformation, negotiation and positive deviance. In 2023, 2024 and 2025 she volunteered in Gonarezhou National Park (Zimbabwe) working with the Gonarezhou Conservation Trust management team on political and wildlife negotiations, capacity building and solution focuses conflict management techniques.
Practical info
The link to attend the workshop will be provided to the participants a few days before the start of the course.
Participants are requested to be present the entire 3 days (for group dynamics, theory and case study reasons). Lunches will last one hour.