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Dean’s own relationship with Nixon was formal and respectful. Interestingly, Dean characterized Ehrlichman, who was often in “over his head” with respect to Washington politics, as arrogant yet insecure. In listening to the Watergate tapes himself, Dean was impressed with the degree to which Ehrlichman was making a power play in the hopes of getting Haldeman’s job. In his interactions with Nixon, Ehrlichman was overly solicitous, almost groveling. Nixon’s reaction was that of even greater psychological distance than with Dean, with whom he had a more formal relationship.

One final analysis with the I-words is noteworthy. The Watergate tapes that were released in 1974 were recorded from June 1972 (soon after the break-in) through July 1973, when the scandal was front-page news most every day. Remember that people who enjoy very high status and high self-esteem and who tend to be overconfident generally use I-words at very low levels. And in his interaction with his aides in June through about November 1972, Nixon’s rate of I-word usage ranged between 2 and 4 percent. However, as the scandal continued to develop and Nixon’s status began to erode, his use of I-words increased month by month. By the last recordings in July 1973, his average I-word usage with his aides hovered around 7 to 8 percent of all his words. In other words, as Nixon’s political world began to crumble, he became less dominant and powerful in all his dealings with others.

The Watergate transcripts point to our ability to distinguish the social hierarchy of Nixon’s aides through Nixon’s own eyes (or, perhaps, mouth). We can infer that he was most responsive and open to what Haldeman may have said compared to others such as Ehrlichman. Interestingly, the pronoun analyses can’t tell us about the relative hierarchy among the aides themselves. Nixon may have conferred more status on Dean than Ehrlichman inside the Oval Office. However, when Dean and Ehrlichman were together in other settings, it is possible that Ehrlichman could have had more status than Dean. Only through analyses of different groups of people can we begin to uncover the complexities of a group’s status hierarchy.

Finally, there is a large difference between status and liking. As Dean pointed out, there is no evidence that Nixon and Haldeman particularly liked one another. Respecting another person and liking them is not the same.

THE LANGUAGE OF LEADERSHIP

Can the research on status be extended to our understanding of leadership? Is it possible to identify good leaders by the ways they use words? Can leaders become more effective if they change the ways they use words? Surprisingly few studies have examined the language of leaders. Even fewer have studied the words of people in everyday life in order to predict what kinds of leaders they might be in the future.

ASSUMING A LEADERSHIP ROLE AFFECTS THE LEADER’S LANGUAGE

Within small groups, leaders do, in fact, talk differently than followers. Ethan Burris from the Red McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas and his colleagues conducted a project where about forty groups of business students worked together on a group task. Each of the four-person work groups were told that they represented a small consulting firm that was to offer advice to a fictitious company to improve its customer service division. The task was complex and required each small group to work together to achieve a solution.

The Burris project stands out because he dictated who the leader would be. He told each group that he had chosen the best possible leader based on an analysis of each student’s personality test scores. In truth, he made the leadership assignment randomly, akin to drawing one of the people’s name out of a hat. What is important, however, is that the groups truly believed that their leader was skilled.

Each group’s interactions were tape-recorded and transcribed. The results were consistent with everything we