Let’s Make a Deal!

Can you afford to miss the Leadership, Business, & Innovation session “How to Negotiate”? 

EuroTimes asked moderator Vincent Qin MD to preview the session.

EuroTimes: Why should an ophthalmologist learn to negotiate? 

Vincent Qin: Because ophthalmologists negotiate every day—even when they don’t call it negotiation. How do they obtain more operating room time? How do they convince management to invest in new technology? How do they negotiate with colleagues over responsibilities or on-call schedules? How do they deal with suppliers, practice managers, hospital executives, or staff representatives? Clinical excellence is essential—but it does not automatically translate into influence over resources, strategy, or organisational decisions.

This session will give participants a practical framework to negotiate more effectively while protecting both personal interests and professional relationships. The session combines a short, practical theory session with an interactive negotiation role-play workshop, allowing participants to immediately put the principles into practice.

Will negotiations with private equity investors be discussed? 

Yes, but as part of a broader, realistic ophthalmology leadership scenario.

The workshop is built around a private eye clinic that has recently been acquired by a private equity group. Participants take on different leadership roles, each with different priorities, interests, and constraints.

The objective is not to ‘beat’ the private equity investor. It is to learn how to find a solution when different stakeholders have fundamentally different priorities. The skills are directly transferable to real-life situations involving hospital groups, investors, practice owners, management teams, or other external stakeholders.

What negotiation skills will attendees acquire? 

The theoretical part introduces the fundamentals of principled negotiation, based on the Getting to Yes framework.

Participants will learn how to:

1. separate people from the problem;
2. focus on interests rather than positions;
3. ask better questions;
4. create options for mutual gain;
5. use objective criteria; and
6. understand their BATNA, or ‘best alternative to a negotiated agreement.’

We will also explore common negotiation traps such as anchoring, positional bargaining, premature judgement, and fixed-pie thinking.

What actually happens during the workshop? 

This is not a workshop where people simply listen to another presentation.

Attendees will be placed in a small group of approximately four participants. Each participant receives a confidential role—CEO, CFO, Chief of Medical Doctors, or Chief of Nurses—and has time to prepare before the negotiation begins.

Each role will have their own priorities, concerns, negotiating levers, and BATNA as well as information not shared with the other participants.

Then the negotiation begins.

For approximately 45–50 minutes, the groups must reach an agreement covering several interconnected decisions.

Attendees will need to:

• defend their role’s interests;
• discover what the other participants really care about;
• ask questions and actively listen;
• manage conflicting priorities;
• create and exchange proposals;
• make trade-offs;
• use objective criteria;
• avoid getting trapped in positional bargaining; and
• ultimately try to build a package everyone can support.

There is no single predetermined answer.

The challenge is to create an agreement that is better than the alternatives available to the participants if they fail to reach a deal.

After the role-play, the group comes back together for a 30-minute debrief.

We will analyse what happened:

• Which negotiating strategies worked?
• Who anchored the discussion?
• Did participants focus on positions or interests?
• Where were opportunities for mutually beneficial trades missed?
• How did BATNAs influence the negotiation?
• What made it possible—or impossible—to reach an agreement?

Why attend? 

Because negotiation is not only for CEOs, lawyers, or business executives. It is a core leadership skill for modern ophthalmologists. Whether working in a university hospital, public hospital, private practice, hospital group, or private equity-backed organisation, an ophthalmologist’s ability to negotiate increasingly determines their ability to influence investment, resources, working conditions, technology, staffing, and clinical strategy.

Come for the theory. Stay for the role-play.

Leave with a negotiation framework that can be used the very next day.