Avoiding accusatory “you”s helps avoid placing unintended blame.

Personal pronouns take ownership. So whether we should use them or not depends on how much responsibility we want for whatever we’re talking about.

Consequently, whether to use pronouns or not depends on how we want to assign credit or blame, and how subjective or objective we want what is being said to seem.

But what we forget is that while it’s easy for us to parse, others may not feel the same way. While we have spent lots of time thinking about something, or know a lot about it, we often fail to account for the fact that others may not be in the same position.

Being nice is good, but eventually decisions need to be made and problems need to be solved.

And that is where less emotional, more cognitive language becomes important. Indeed, when customer service agents used more emotional language at the beginning of conversations, and more cognitive language in the middle, customers were more satisfied with the interaction and purchased more afterward.

Don’t just solve. And don’t just connect.

Connect, then solve.