“What we say within a group, the ideas we suggest, and the way we support others, signals something about who we are to our coworkers. It can attract people to us or repel them,” says Melissa Chamberlin, assistant professor of management and entrepreneurship at Iowa State University, and coauthor of a paper on the topic in the Journal of Management.
In the paper, Chamberlin and her research team demonstrate how two different ways of communicating work-related issues shape reputations and affect the formation of teams to complete short-term projects. They found people who use “supportive voice,” which fuels trust and cooperation, have a higher chance of being recruited to a team compared to those who use a more task-oriented “challenging voice.”