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part of their own identities. This sense of we-ness may explain why they work harder, have lower employee turnover, and have a greater sense of fulfillment about their work lives. And be very concerned if an organization’s employees start calling it “the company” or, worse, “that company” and referring to their co-workers as “they.” They-companies can be nightmares because workers are proclaiming that their work identity has nothing to do with them. No wonder consultants report that they-companies have unhappy workers and high turnover.

How people talk about their company is only one way to tap the group dynamics of an organization. By listening to the words people use within any group, several features about the group’s inner workings can be unmasked. Through e-mails, web pages, transcripts of meetings, and other word clues, we can measure how much group members think alike. It is also possible to profile groups in terms of their cohesiveness, productivity, formality, shared history, and, in some cases, their honesty and intentions to change.

This chapter may not be of relevance to some people. If you do not have any family, co-workers, or friends, or know anyone in any organization, neighborhood, or community, you can skip this chapter and jump to the next. Everyone else should keep reading.

WE-WORDS AS IDENTITY MARKERS

I learned about I-, we-, and they-companies from a consultant I sat next to on a flight several years ago. About the same time, couples researchers were discovering some similar patterns. In a typical study, married couples would be invited into the lab and encouraged to talk either about their marriage or about a problem in their relationship. Sparks would sometimes fly—sometimes in good ways, sometimes not.

In general, the more a couple used we-words when being interviewed about their marriage, the better. When couples used the warm-and-fuzzy we that said “my spouse and I,” it signified a healthier relationship and, in some studies, predicted how long their marriage would last. Interestingly, the use of we-words only predicts a good relationship if the members of the couple are in the presence of an interviewer. Other studies where married couples were asked to wear a digital recorder for several days failed to find any patterns with we-words. The use of we-words around just one other person often means “you” or “everybody but you.” A couple’s use of we-words when talking to a third party predicts a satisfying relationship. However, we use for couples talking only to each other rarely predicts the quality of the relationship.

In the laboratory, when talking about marital disagreements, we-words indicated a good relationship whereas the use of you-words suggested problems. The use of you-words, such as you, your, and yourself, were most apparent in toxic conversations—usually where the two participants were accusing each other of various shortcomings.

We-words may even save your life. In one project, patients with heart failure were interviewed with their spouses. They were asked a series of questions, including “As you think back on how the two of you have coped with the heart condition, what do you think you have done best?” The more the spouses used we-words in their answers, the healthier the patients were six months later. The use of we-words by spouses indicated that they viewed their partner’s health problem as a shared problem that both were committed to fixing. When both members of the relationship were working together to cope with the illness, it reduced the physical and emotional stress on the patient.

We-words may even save your life if you are perfectly healthy. Analyses of commercial airline cockpit recordings have found that poor communication among the flight crew has contributed to over half of all airline crashes in the last century. In some cases, pilots established a toxic atmosphere that discouraged dissent. In other cases, one or more crew members were distracted and failed to listen to critical information from others. A recurring theme has been that the most effective