Business management is an increasingly appealing and popular skill in the professional world and while there are many different competencies that someone in a managerial position can benefit from, one of the mandatory skills for navigating such a career is knowing the terminology and vocabulary.
Regardless of your talent for management or natural affinity for positions of leadership, you won’t be able to get very far if you’re unable to understand the jargon being thrown around in the workplace; in a competitive fast-paced environment, your co-workers and peers won’t have time to slow down and explain either.
The business sector is particularly notorious for this use of often alienating terms that don’t make sense to someone out of the loop.
While this might sound like a lot of hassle, don’t worry, Superprof has got your back! In this article, we’ll be trying to demystify the terminology of business management and give you some of the most common and important terms so that you can navigate the workplace like a pro.
Communication Essentials for Managers
To start with, we’ll have a look at some of the terms you might have come across in business contexts that might not make a whole lot of sense to an outsider or a ‘layman’.
A lot of these terms are words in English that have an alternative meaning in ‘business English’, which can seem like an entirely different language to someone inexperienced.
The other kind we will come across frequently are acronyms, which are thrown around constantly and are expected knowledge that shouldn’t need to be explained on company time.
- Capital: Capital in its simplest terms is another word for money. The nuance when it comes to business and economics is that it refers to wealth in terms of assets and resources, instead of just currency like pounds or dollars.
- Gross and Net: Most commonly used next to the word income, i.e. ‘Gross income’. Gross refers to the total quantity of something before any deductions. In the context of income, it is the total amount of money brought in by a business before accounting for the expenses.
Net on the other hand refers to the quantity after such deductions. The net change in anything is the result after all calculations and adjustments are made and represents the current state of something expressed as an increase or decrease.
You can have a net change in abstract things too, such as a net increase in happiness, or productivity, which is useful to understand as a business manager.
- Margin: A margin is often, but not exclusively, a percentage value which represents the net profit of an economic activity or company after all income and expenses are considered.
There are two use cases of this term, one being in reference to an existing profit for a given period of time.
The other case is more of a goal or target for a company, therefore a 10% target profit margin means that after all expenses are accounted for, the company is aiming to have a net profit of 10%.
- Fixed and Variable Costs: There are two main types of upkeep costs in accounting, which refer to money that must be paid in order to keep the business up and running in both the long term and the short term.
Fixed costs are static values which won’t usually change regardless of the performance of the company over a certain time frame. Examples of these costs include employee salaries, the costs of renting a site like an office or factory and bills. Fixed costs aren’t costs that will never change in the business life-cycle, but rather costs that don’t depend on the company's success and the volume of production and sales.
Variable costs on the other hand do depend on such factors. To give an example of how this works in practice, if you sell a physical product that needs shipping to the customer, then the cost of shipping varies depending on how many products you need to ship.
Other variable costs include hourly wages and materials for manufacturing, depending on how much manufacturing a company does.
- Optics: Optics traditionally refers to the process of seeing in the biological and visual sense. In business, optics also refers to perception, but in a more nuanced way.
Whenever a decision or action is taken in a business context, the optics are the resulting perception of the action by either shareholders or the public. Even if a decision is brilliant on a purely logical level, if it looks bad to the public or the shareholders, a company is likely to lose value overall.
This is why optics are particularly important to understand from a business management perspective.
Industry-Specific Language for Effective Leadership
We just covered some of the most important terms to understand in marketing communication and business management, but now we’re going to look at some of the lingo and jargon used in a leadership and teamwork context.
This is often the most confusing language because it is idiomatic meaning it only makes sense in context and therefore doesn’t see use in day-to-day language.
- Timeline: In normal speech a timeline is a chronology of events, but in business, it refers to the amount of time given for a goal to be accomplished. You might hear phrases like ‘the project timeline is aggressive’, which in this context means that the business doesn’t have enough time to complete the task at hand.
- Ballpark: This term is often thrown around colloquially as well as in a business context so you might have heard it before. It is essentially another way of saying ‘rough estimate’, with an example phrase being. ‘Give me a ballpark quote for this commission’.
- Boots on the Ground: What you might notice in business jargon is that we love to borrow from military terminology, since there is a comparable regimentality and organisation in the two sectors. Boots on the ground refer to the amount of people who are actively working on a goal or project. For example, you could say ‘we don’t have enough boots on the ground for this project’.
- Cleaning House: Another borrowed term, cleaning house doesn’t just mean cleaning the office. It is actually a crude, yet commonly used slang meaning to ‘clean up’ a company by firing/letting go employees, with the implication that they are unnecessary.
- Housekeeping: While we’re thinking of the company as a house, it’s a good time to introduce another term, housekeeping. This refers to the basic everyday tasks and responsibilities shared between the employees that keep the workplace and therefore the company running smoothly.
- Square the circle: Sometimes when things aren’t working, businesses and teams need to get creative to solve the problem in unorthodox ways. As a manager you can use the term, ‘Square the circle’ to incentivise your team to start thinking outside of the box. It also has an alternative meaning of something like ‘fix this somehow’, or ‘make this work’.
- Cash cow: It might be surprising to some, but this term isn’t an agricultural one. While a cash cow certainly could refer to a cow which produces a high yield of milk, (hence the origin of the term), it typically refers to a particularly valuable or profitable asset, or in some cases a profitable person.
Enhancing Managerial Communication Skills
Aside from reading lists of terms, how else can we improve our communication skills effectively? Let’s have a look at a few methods and evaluate the pros and cons.
Online Research
Nowadays, it's easier than ever to find the information we need on the internet. Through the use of web pages, online literature and video tutorials such as those on YouTube, you can find an amazing amount of resources and knowledge, but there are a couple of drawbacks.
For one, the knowledge you can find online is often unofficial or incomplete and missing context, so you won't be able to match what a formal method could achieve. Secondly, you need to know what you’re looking for, which is often tricky if you don’t already know the answers.
| Resource Type | Examples | Pros | Cons |
|---|---|---|---|
| Websites | Grammarly, Purdue OWL, British Council LearnEnglish | Free resources; Accessible anytime, anywhere; Focus on grammar, writing, and business communication | Information may be unofficial or incomplete; Lack of context in some resources |
| Online Literature | Harvard Business Review (HBR) articles | Insights into effective communication strategies for managers | Some content may require subscription or payment |
| Video Tutorials | TED Talks, Toastmasters International, Business English Pod | Visual learning aids; Topics include public speaking, presentations, business communication | Quality may vary; Limited interactivity compared to live training or workshops |
Books and Courses
Courses, such as those in higher education and the books that accompany them, are a superb way of picking up detailed and specific knowledge about business management. This method ensures that you will receive a comprehensive understanding of the sector.
The downside is that courses and even books are expensive and typically offer a far broader spectrum of information than might be needed. Courses especially are a big commitment.
| Resource Type | Examples | Pros | Cons |
|---|---|---|---|
| Books | "The Communication Skills Handbook" by Jane Summers and Brett Smith, "Effective Communication for Managers" by Owen Hargie, "Business Communication Essentials" by Courtland Bovee and John Thill | Detailed knowledge and insights; Comprehensive coverage of communication skills for managers | Cost of purchasing books; Limited interactivity compared to courses or workshops |
| Online Courses | Coursera, Udemy, LinkedIn Learning | Flexibility to learn at your own pace and schedule; Variety of courses available on business communication | Some courses may require payment or subscription; Limited personalization compared to live training or tuition |
Tuition
Nothing trumps tuition when it comes to cost-effective and tailored learning. The relationship between a tutor and a student is much better at facilitating access to specific knowledge based on your strengths, weaknesses, and needs as a learner.
| Resource Type | Examples | Pros | Cons |
|---|---|---|---|
| Private Tutors | Superprof | Personalised and tailored learning experiences; Focus on specific needs and strengths as a learner | Cost associated with hiring a private tutor; Scheduling and availability may be challenging |
| Language Schools | British Council, local language schools | Structured courses designed for business communication skills; Professional instructors | Cost of enrolling in courses; Availability of courses may vary depending on location |
| Corporate Programs | Internal training programs within companies | Customised training based on company needs; Integration of language skills with practical business scenarios | Limited to employees of specific companies; Availability of programs may vary depending on company policies |
The challenges associated with tuition are scheduling, availability and budgeting.
Afterword
Thank you so much for reading our article on business terminology for managers, we hope you’ve picked up some of the key lingo you’ll need to either manage yourself or better communicate with your colleagues.
There’s much more to it than we were able to cover today, so why not fill in those gaps by finding yourself the perfect tutor using Superprof premier service?
Superprof eliminates all the challenges we mentioned about tuition, by getting you in touch with tutors in your price range, based on your location and letting you set up the ideal schedule, by giving you the tools to communicate with tutors for free before your first lesson.
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Thanks for the article! this article upgraded my vocabulary. I will implement this knowledge in my own financial services UK business.
Thank you for the lovely feedback! 😊 We’re thrilled to hear that the article helped boost your vocabulary. Best of luck implementing your new knowledge in your financial services business! 📈💼