The fact that the dictator has this strategy is entirely sufficient to explain his entourage's behaviours towards him: "status" strikes me as a superfluous hypothesis.

I'm confessing my ignorance of what explanatory work the term "status" is supposed to achieve.

If you are in the presence of a dictator, I do not recommend doing the following:

• Maintain eye contact with him.
• Correct him when he is wrong.
• Interrupt him while he is speaking.
• Wear flamboyant clothes that attract more attention than him.
• Talk in a voice that is slow, deep and firm, brooking no interruption.
• Standing tall, taking up space in a relaxed manner. For example, occupying all of a doorway, leaning on it slightly.
• Sitting back on your chair, legs somewhat apart, hands hanging loosely drawing attention to your crotch.
• Teasing women in a playful manner that makes them laugh, lower their eyes, and touch you.
• (Um... what else is high status?) Catching and maintaining the attention of the audience by telling stories that emphasize your dominance and popularity.

Doing the above (high status) behaviors can, all else being equal, be expected to increase your chances of death. Status is a useful concept here because there is a whole category of things that can be described as 'signalling high status' that you are best not doing in the presence of a dictator. It is useful to use the descriptor status because it can then be used in other contexts. I can say "if you want to attract mates do high status things" and you may then know to do this whole bunch of things that you should not do in the presence of a high status threat (dictator).

If you ignore the concept of status you will end up one of:

• Dead (in our culture: fired).
• Not attracting mates.
• Using the concept of status but not calling it by the name status. This includes 'just knowing what you should do because your instincts tell you'.

Pointing me to an authoritative source could be a good start to my correcting this state of ignorance.

I'm not sure what kind of source you are interested in. OvercomingBias contains regular posts on the subject that include links. There are a multitude of books about status that range from academic to popularizations. The academic works show that authoritative sources find the status concept useful but are probably not of much use in describing what it does in practical terms. The other works that popularize social and evolutionary psychology are probably more relevant.