Negotiating with success
Negotiating with success
9, 11 December 2026 & 13 January 2027, 09h - 17h
General context
Negotiation is a core skill for researchers, whether you’re aligning project timelines, sharing resources, deciding on authorship, or defining team roles. Done well, it builds trust and long-term collaboration; done poorly, it creates conflict and missed opportunities.
This workshop equips you with the mindset and practical tools to negotiate effectively and with integrity.
You will learn to prepare strategically, manage difficult interactions, and move from positional bargaining to constructive, interest-based agreements.
After this workshop, you will:
- Recognize your negotiation style and adapt it to different situations.
- Prepare effective negotiation strategies by setting objectives and prioritizing interests.
- Communicate with confidence using questioning techniques and non-verbal cues.
- Navigate key stages of negotiation and manage challenging dynamics.
- Create sustainable, win–win agreements that strengthen professional relationships.
This online workshop is delivered across three interactive sessions to allow time for practice and reflection. You will:
- Participate in real-world simulations, role-plays, and group exercises to apply negotiation principles.
- Explore your personal negotiation style and learn strategies to improve collaboration.
- Work on practical cases relevant to research environments (e.g., authorship, teamwork, resource sharing).
Each session builds on the previous one, ensuring participants develop confidence and actionable skills for future negotiations.
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
Overall, the whole course was absolutely great. It allowed to me to learn skills and perspectives that I could have never had otherwise.
Niccolo Roda - Participant edition Spring 2026
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.