Good point. I felt some regret as I posted that I hadn't mentioned this, but it seemed to me that the notion of "self-esteem transactions" I introduced did direct attention to status as something people do.

You can find the relevant quotes about the three teachers in the excerpt I linked to.

status as the ability to control the group

This can be in part a matter of positional power. In my secret identity I am sometimes called on to work with a group as a facilitator: pretty much by definition, my job description is then to control the group (or more precisely the group's process).

Granted, It's not all about the position. I know how to build trust and rapport, and I can even articulate some of how I do that. I suspect that if I was clueless about these things I'd have a hard time facilitating group meetings.