If you’ve ever read a work email and thought, “I’m 83% sure this is a threat,” congratulations—you’re fluent in Corporate Speak. It’s the native tongue of middle management, cultivated in sterile boardrooms and passed down like ancient scrolls from one onboarding session to the next.
Corporate Speak isn’t just a language—it’s a defense mechanism. A verbal force field that allows professionals to say absolutely nothing, all while sounding deeply professional and slightly menacing.
But fear not, brave employee. Whether you’re an intern, a burnt-out lifer, or someone who just wants to reply all with “what are we even doing,” we’ve compiled this essential Corporate Speak Decoder to help you survive the linguistic minefield of modern offices.
1. “Let’s Circle Back”
Translation: I’m avoiding this right now and hoping you forget about it forever.
This is the corporate equivalent of putting your problems in a locked drawer and throwing the drawer into the ocean. "Let’s circle back" sounds proactive—until you realize you've been circling for three quarters and still don’t have budget approval.
Bonus points if they add a timeframe: “Let’s circle back Q4.” That’s code for "we will revisit this when there’s an entirely different team and everyone forgets we ever discussed it."
2. “Just Following Up”
Translation: I asked you something three emails ago and you ignored me like a pro.
A classic passive-aggressive power move. “Just following up” is email for “I am haunting your inbox like a ghost of productivity past.” It’s usually deployed after two polite nudges and right before CC’ing your manager.
Follow-up escalation levels:
“Just checking in” = I’m still polite
“Any updates?” = I’m losing patience
“Per my last email…” = I’ve snapped
3. “Let’s Take This Offline”
Translation: You’ve embarrassed me in front of other adults and now you must pay.
Used mid-Zoom or during a meeting when someone dares to ask a real question, “Let’s take this offline” is the workplace equivalent of “meet me behind the gym after class.”
What it sounds like: collaborative problem-solving.
What it means: “You’re challenging me, and I don’t like that in public.”
4. “Bandwidth”
Translation: I don’t want to do this.
Nothing gets you out of responsibility faster than pretending to be a server from 1998. "I don't have the bandwidth" sounds technical, but it’s just fancy for “absolutely not, Brenda.”
Related terms include “at capacity,” “heads down,” and “laser-focused”—all polite ways of saying, “I will literally set fire to this spreadsheet before I take on another task.”
5. “Let’s Sync”
Translation: Prepare for a meeting that could’ve been an email.
“Let’s sync” is deceptively cute—like workplace slang’s answer to a puppy. But don’t be fooled. Behind those innocent syllables lies a 30-minute video call, five awkward silences, and one person screen-sharing the wrong tab for six minutes.
Bonus hazard: Someone inevitably says, “I’ll give you your time back,” but never actually does.
6. “Moving Forward”
Translation: Everything that just happened was bad and we’re pretending it didn’t.
Corporate Speak thrives on subtlety, and nothing gaslights quite like “moving forward.” It appears in retrospectives, apologies, and post-scandal internal memos. It’s not so much a phrase as a spell. With it, you can erase past failures, poor decisions, and that time Dave CC’d the CEO by mistake.
7. “Action Items”
Translation: Homework, but make it soul-crushing.
No meeting is complete until someone says “Let’s review the action items”—which is just HR-speak for “you’re not allowed to leave until I assign you unpaid chores.”
Worse, action items are almost always vague. “Follow up with procurement” could mean anything from “send a polite email” to “embark on a six-month odyssey involving three departments, one fire drill, and a blood pact.”
8. “Value-Add”
Translation: We need to justify your existence.
When someone says “What’s the value-add here?” they’re not looking for insight. They’re looking for reasons not to cut this from the budget. If you’re ever called a “high value-add,” congrats! You’ve been backhandedly told your job is safe—for now.
Also in this family: “synergy,” “deliverables,” and “KPIs”—phrases with the emotional range of a stapler and the soul of a LinkedIn post.
9. “Touch Base”
Translation: We’ve got nothing to say, but let’s schedule time to say it anyway.
“Touch base” is the Swiss Army knife of vague intent. It could mean anything: a project update, a performance check-in, or a verbal nap. The point isn’t the conversation—it’s to make sure both parties are equally confused by the end.
10. “Thought Leadership”
Translation: You once tweeted something semi-coherent.
This phrase shows up when someone is trying to make a slide deck sound like a TED Talk. In reality, “thought leadership” is code for “you know how to use Canva and buzzwords.”
If someone refers to themselves as a thought leader? Run.
Final Thoughts: Decoding or Surviving?
Corporate Speak isn’t just a way to communicate—it’s a way to obfuscate. The more syllables, the less meaning. The more meetings, the less progress. The more someone says “quick sync,” the more you know it will absolutely not be quick.
So next time your boss says “let’s double-click on that,” don’t panic. Just nod thoughtfully, open your Google Calendar, and start planning your escape.
After all, we’ll circle back.
Speaking of circling back, just checking in on if you checked out our forum yet?
