Professional Communication Glossary A to Z — Professional Communication

Professional Communication glossary — 136 definitions

Every term defined across the 28 sections of the guide, in alphabetical order.
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"I don't know": An honest, professional answer, paired with a commitment to follow up. More credible than a bluff.
"I" message: Phrasing from your own feeling/need ("I need...") rather than accusing ("you never...").
"Speak to the audience" rule: Looking at the audience, not the screen: the support is an aid, not a text to read.
Action plan: A table linking each action to an owner and a deadline (who / what / when).
Actionable subject: A subject that states what's expected ("For approval", "FYI", "Action required").
Active listening: Listening with the intention to fully understand the other person, and showing it, before reacting.
Active silence: Leaving a pause after an answer: it invites the other to go deeper and shows you're not rushing.
Active voice: A subject that performs the action ("the team delivered the project"): more direct and clear than passive voice ("the project was delivered by the team").
Adaptation (register): Adjusting vocabulary, tone and level of detail to the profile and expectations of the recipient.
Agenda: The list of planned topics: it structures the meeting and, often, the outline of the minutes.
Aggression: A domination attitude: imposing, raising your voice, disrespecting the other. Damages the relationship.
Agreement: A consistency rule (subject-verb, tense) among the most common and visible mistakes.
Alignment / congruence: Consistency across the three channels. An aligned message is credible; a contradictory one sows doubt.
Argument: A structure for conviction: a clear thesis, ranked arguments, evidence (numbers, examples, testimonials).
Articulation: Clarity of pronunciation: it makes your speech audible and understandable, especially in a large room or on video.
Assertiveness: The ability to assert yourself and defend your rights while respecting others': neither passive nor aggressive.
Asynchronous: Communication with no expected immediate reply: everyone answers when they can, preserving focus.
Asynchronous communication: Written exchange with no expected immediate reply (email, message, shared document): everyone responds at their own pace.
Attitude toward hierarchy: Degree of power distance: some cultures are very hierarchical, others more egalitarian — this changes how people address each other.
Audience-oriented benefit: Presenting information from the angle of what interests the other person (their gain, their problem solved).
Authenticity: A sincere, aligned presence, without playing a role: what sets a great speaker apart from a good technician.
Belly breathing: Breathing from the diaphragm to settle the voice, slow down and calm stress. Anti-stage-fright technique #1.
Call to action (CTA): The explicit ask: what the recipient must do, ideally with a deadline ("please approve by Friday").
Caps / emojis: TYPING IN CAPS reads as shouting; emojis should be calibrated to context and relationship.
Cc / Bcc: Cc: visible copy to everyone; Bcc: hidden copy (others don't see who's Bcc'd), useful for confidential group sends.
Channel: The medium of transmission: face-to-face speech, phone, email, video call, writing. Each channel has its own strengths and limits.
Channel choice: Deciding on the right medium based on stakes: IM (fast), email (record), call (complex/sensitive), meeting (group decision).
Channel vs private message: A team channel is visible to the group (shared info); a private message stays between two people (targeted topic).
Character: The hero of the story (a client, a colleague, yourself) the audience can identify with.
Cialdini's principles: Six levers of influence: reciprocity, commitment/consistency, social proof, authority, liking, scarcity.
Clean slide: A slide with a single idea, little text, a strong visual: readable within seconds.
Closing phrase: The standard sign-off ("Sincerely," / "Yours faithfully,").
Cognitive load: The audience's mental effort: an overloaded slide saturates attention and hurts comprehension.
Common ground: A shared point of agreement to build on: identify it early to bring positions closer together.
Communication objective: The intended outcome: inform, persuade, drive a decision, motivate. It shapes every content and form choice.
Constructive criticism: Corrective feedback focused on solutions and progress, delivered with respect, distinct from a personal attack.
Cross-cultural communication: Communicating effectively with people from different cultures, taking their codes into account.
Cultural humility: A posture of curiosity and respect: observe, ask, adapt rather than assume.
De-escalation: A set of moves (calm, listening, rephrasing, a pause) that bring down emotional tension.
Decision log: The unambiguous list of decisions made: the heart of the minutes.
DESC method: Describe the facts → Express your feeling → Specify what you want → Consequences you expect.
Disagreement vs. conflict: Disagreement is about ideas (healthy); conflict turns personal and emotional (to be defused).
Emotion: The driver that anchors the message: a story makes you feel, and you remember what you felt.
Emotional anchoring: A genuine connection to your message and your audience, which gives the talk strength and conviction.
Empathy: Understanding another person's feelings and viewpoint without necessarily sharing them. The heart of listening.
Ethnocentrism: The tendency to judge other cultures by your own, taken as the norm. The main trap to avoid.
Executive summary: A faithful condensation of a large topic or set of documents, surfacing the essentials.
Eye contact: Visual connection with the audience: it creates a bond, captures attention and conveys sincerity.
Facilitator: The person who steers: opens, distributes the floor, refocuses, manages time and concludes on decisions.
Factual feedback: Based on precise, observable facts ("the report arrived at 6pm yesterday"), not judgments ("you're careless").
Feedback: The receiver's response that proves — or not — proper understanding. Without feedback, you don't know if the message got through.
Feeling: Naming the emotion actually felt ("I feel worried"), distinct from a disguised judgment ("I feel betrayed").
Formal letter: A structured official document (letter, certificate, notice) following established conventions.
Gestures: Hand and arm movements that illustrate and pace your speech when natural.
Grounding: A sense of stability, feet firmly planted, that calms the body and projects confidence.
Header: The identification block at the top: sender, recipient, date, place, subject and references.
High-stakes presentation: A talk where a great deal is at play (a decision, image, funding): it demands maximum preparation and mastery.
High/low-context culture: High context: implicit meaning, what's unsaid matters (Japan…). Low context: explicit meaning, things are said (Germany, US…).
Homophones: Words that sound alike but are spelled differently: classic sources of error.
Hook: The opening that grabs attention within seconds: a question, a number, an anecdote, a situation.
Hybrid equity: Making sure remote participants have the same standing as those present (floor time, information).
Influence vs. manipulation: Influence serves a shared interest with honesty; manipulation deceives for a hidden interest.
Instant messaging: A tool for short, near real-time exchanges (Teams, Slack). Complements email, doesn't replace it.
Inverted pyramid: A journalistic structure: the essentials first, details after. Ideal for a busy reader.
Inverted pyramid / BLUF: A structure that puts the conclusion and recommendation up front, ahead of the details and evidence.
Jargon: Specialist vocabulary. Useful among experts, it becomes noise for a non-initiate: translate it.
Key message: The single, essential idea the audience should remember. If they kept only one sentence, this would be it.
Level of detail: The amount of information suited to the audience: a summary for a decision-maker, precision for an operational role.
Meeting minutes: A summary document that records what was decided in a meeting and what needs to happen next.
Meeting objective: What should be accomplished by the end (decide, inform, solve). Without a clear objective, no useful meeting.
Memo: A brief, official internal communication: informs of a decision or instructs a procedure.
Message: The information being conveyed, as it is encoded (words, tone, gestures) — not necessarily as it is received.
Message / moral: The key idea the story serves to convey. The story is a means, not an end in itself.
Narrative structure: The basic arc: initial situation → triggering event/obstacle → resolution and lesson.
Need: The universal need behind the emotion (reliability, recognition, security). Connecting emotion to need opens dialogue.
Nervous gestures: Fidgety movements (rocking, playing with a pen, hands in pockets) that distract and betray stress.
Netiquette: The set of good-manners rules for digital communication (email, messaging).
Noise: Any disturbance that distorts the message: physical noise (environment), semantic (jargon, ambiguity), psychological (emotion, bias).
Nominalization: Turning a verb into a noun ("perform an analysis" instead of "analyze"): needlessly heavy. Prefer verbs.
Nonverbal: Body language: posture, gestures, gaze, facial expressions, distance. It speaks even when you stay silent.
NVC: Nonviolent Communication: a 4-step approach (OFNR) for expressing and listening without violence or judgment.
Objection: A disagreement or reservation expressed. Welcome it, don't brush it aside: answering calmly builds trust.
Observation: Describing concrete, verifiable facts, without interpretation or judgment ("you arrived at 9:30am").
One email = one topic: A clarity principle: handling a single request per email eases replying and follow-up.
Open point: An unresolved topic to revisit: noting it prevents it from disappearing.
Open-ended question: A question calling for elaboration ("how?", "what makes you...?") rather than a yes/no: it opens the dialogue.
Pace: Speaking speed. Under stress it speeds up: slowing down improves comprehension and presence.
Para-verbal: The way of speaking: intonation, pace, volume, rhythm, silences. It colors meaning and conveys emotion.
Paradoxical communication: A gap between what is said and what is shown (positive words, closed body): the listener senses the contradiction and trusts the nonverbal.
Passivity: A withdrawal attitude: staying silent, giving in, fading out at the expense of your own needs. A source of frustration.
Persuasion: Getting someone to agree with an idea or an action through argument and influence, while respecting their freedom to decide.
Pitch: A short, punchy presentation (often a few minutes) meant to convince: an idea, a project, yourself.
Position vs. interest: The position is what's demanded; the interest is the real need behind it. Negotiating on interests opens solutions.
Posture: How you hold yourself: feet grounded, straight back, open shoulders. The foundation of presence and stability.
Presence status: An indicator (available, busy, away) that signals your availability: respect it in others, keep yours up to date.
Presentation support: The slides accompanying the talk. They serve the speech, not replace it.
Proofreading with distance: Rereading after a break (or the next day): distance reveals mistakes the eye was auto-correcting.
Q&A session: The exchange time after a talk: a key moment for credibility and interaction.
Readability: How easily a text is read and understood. It can be measured and improved through simple rules.
Receiving feedback: Listening without justifying yourself, saying thanks, clarifying, then deciding what to keep: a skill in its own right.
Recipient (To / Cc): "To" = those who must act; "Cc" = those informed with no action expected. Confusing them dilutes accountability.
Recommendation: The clear course of action that follows from the analysis: the true added value of a report.
Rehearsal: Practicing aloud, filmed or in front of a test audience: the real secret of seasoned speakers.
Rephrasing: Restating what you understood in your own words ("so, for you…") to check and show you've grasped it.
Rephrasing the question: Restating the question asked: buys thinking time, verifies understanding, and lets the whole room hear it.
Reply all: Replies to the sender AND all recipients. Use only when everyone is genuinely concerned.
Report: An analytical document: presents a situation, studies it, and leads to argued recommendations.
Request: A concrete, positive, negotiable ask ("would you be willing to let me know if you're running late?").
Round-robin: A technique giving each person the floor in turn, to gather input and involve everyone.
Salutation: The opening ("Dear Sir/Madam,"), to adjust depending on whether the recipient and their title are known.
Saying no: Refusing a request clearly and respectfully, without aggression or excessive guilt.
Scannability: How easily a text can be skimmed: short paragraphs, bullet points, bolded keywords.
Search keyword: A precise term (project name, reference) placed in the subject to find the email months later.
Sender / receiver: The sender produces and sends the message; the receiver gets it and interprets it. Roles constantly swap in a dialogue.
Short sentence: Ideally one idea per sentence, ~15-20 words. Reduces reading effort and ambiguity.
Silence (pause): An intentional pause that underlines an idea, lets the audience breathe, and signals confidence.
Social proof: The tendency to do what others do ("already adopted by 500 clients"): a powerful lever for buy-in.
Spell-checker: A tool (Word, Grammarly, browser) that flags mistakes and suggestions — useful but fallible, don't follow it blindly.
Stage fright: A stress reaction before/during public speaking. Natural and manageable; it can turn into positive energy.
Storytelling: The art of conveying a message through an embodied narrative (character, stake, transformation) to make it memorable.
Subject / references: A summary of the letter and case numbers: eases processing and filing.
Subject line: The email's title line: its summary, decisive for opening and filing.
Target audience: The person or group the message is addressed to. All preparation starts by identifying them.
Targeted proofreading: Rereading once per error type (one pass for agreement, one for punctuation) rather than everything at once.
Three-part structure: Hook → development of the core message → conclusion that restates the message and calls for action.
Throughline: The logical thread that connects the parts and guides the audience without losing them.
Tone: The relational color of a message: professional, warm, neutral. In writing, it's read in the words chosen and the punctuation.
Tricky question: A hostile question meant to destabilize. Handled with calm, facts, and no aggression.
Type tag: A bracketed prefix ([URGENT], [FYI], [ACTION]) that signals the nature of the email at a glance.
Vague/empty subject: A non-informative subject ("Hi", "Follow-up"): the leading cause of emails going unopened or lost.
Verbal: The content: the words and vocabulary chosen. Essential, but far from sufficient on its own.
Video call: A remote meeting by video. It requires its own etiquette: camera, floor management, screen sharing.
Video-call etiquette: Best practices: camera on, mic muted when not speaking, no interrupting, a well-framed and well-lit setup.
Video-call fatigue: Exhaustion from back-to-back video meetings. Prevented with breaks and shorter meetings.
Visual: An image, diagram or chart that conveys understanding faster and better than a long text.
Win-win: Seeking a solution that satisfies both parties' interests, rather than a power struggle.