H
ow can I stand up for my interests without damaging the relationship? How can I raise my voice now and then without getting a headache? In this workshop you practise negotiations, you will learn how to convince others and how to say ‘no’.
How to say ‘No’
You are extremely busy with all your different tasks and you often take work home to finish it on time. You find it hard to say ‘no’ when someone asks you to do yet another task.
The best way to ensure that you spend your time well, is to make the right long-term choices for yourself. What would you like to do in ten years? And what tasks would you like to discard? In an ideal world, how much time would you like to spend on work, hobbies, family and friends?
There is a big difference between working efficiently and working on the right things. The latter is effect-oriented, while the former has its limits. As your career advances, the number of projects increase, and with that the number of responsibilities and duties. At some point choosing the projects that are right for you becomes more important than working efficiently. You should want to check your “inbox” instead of always wanting to increase your output.
Knowing what you want to do (and don’t want to do) is the first step. Then you need to be able to say ‘no’ in a friendly way to your colleagues and supervisors. That becomes easier once you know to which tasks and activities you have said ‘YES’.
In this workshop you decide on the tasks you are definitely going to pursue and those you would like to discard. Then you practise different ways of convincing your colleagues and supervisors. You will learn to say no in an effective and friendly way.
Negotiating. Results and relations
Scientists often find themselves in situations where good negotiation skills are called for. For instance, when communicating with their supervisor, collaborating with other scientists on a paper, or when applying for a new position. The difficulty is to pursue your own ideas and maintain a good relationship with important others at the same time.
The question always seems to be whether the negotiation should be soft or hard. Negotiation is actually an everyday occurrence and need not result in battle. The two parties can even both come out of negotiations as winners, if you deploy a little creativity and pay respectful attention to everyone’s interests. In this workshop participants learn how to prepare negotiations thoroughly and how both parties can book success.
We focus on negotiations with colleagues, supervisors and people you supervise yourself. We start with an exciting negotiating game and move from discussing the theory and strategies to personal preferences and personal actions and we will finish practising communication in a ‘real-life’ case.