At first sight, young investigators might not need to negotiate often in their daily lifes as heads of a junior research group. Nevertheless, 10 YIN members signed up for this workshop and gathered at the "räume" venue in the middle of the Hardtwald, just outside of KIT campus south for a one day workshop in April 2019. In this part of the YIN educational program, Udo Kempkes introduced basic concepts for successful negotiations ranging from cooperativity to escalation. We explored the Harvard concept for collarborative conduct of negotiations during several interactive role plays. By putting the theoretical frameworks into action and discussing the results, we could easily relate them to challenging situations everyone of us had experienced previously. Reflecting own experiences and action strategies and discussing them within the peer group of fellow YIN members in different settings was most valuable for most of us.

We also learned about tangible tools to influence specific phases of negotiations and to resolve conflicts. By continuously referring to practical examples and reflecting real-life situations, we became aware that negotiations and conflicts of various kinds are something we have to deal with basically every single day. Sometimes small and easy, sometimes big and convoluted. The YIN workshop "Negotiating Confidently" made us realize how we used to negotiate and provided concrete and tailored input where me might not use existing potentials to the fullest.