Your Message Matters: How Its Focus and Tone Affect the Level of Conflict Personalization

Taking conflict at work personally is associated with a decrease in well-being and more suboptimal conflict management behavior. Drawing from literature on workplace conflict, conflict expression, and employee voice, we explored how the focus (solution vs. problem) and tone (constructive vs. destructive) of a message influence message recipients’ level of conflict personalization. In a vignette study ( n = 683), we asked participants to identify with a task-related workplace conflict, communicated through email. Results supported our two hypotheses: Both a problem focus and a destructive tone resulted in higher levels of conflict personalization. There was no significant interaction of focus and tone on conflict personalization. Additional analyses revealed that message tone had a significantly stronger effect on conflict personalization than message focus. This study is a first step in understanding communication-related antecedents of conflict personalization at work. It provides workplace conflict- and voice scholars with recommendations for future research and uncovers potential organizational interventions to improve (digital) conflict communication.