Management glossary

The management and execution glossary

Clear definitions of the terms that come up in manager conversations, performance reviews, and AI tools. Written for people who run teams, not academics.

Jump to Core conceptsMeetingsConversationsPerformance and retentionAI at workSpecific situationsComparisons

Core concepts

6 pages

Definitions for the terms that come up most in manager conversations: effectiveness, execution, decision-making, and the structural things that make a team work or break down.

Manager effectiveness
What a manager is actually measured on, and the four inputs that move it.
Middle management burnout
Why the layer with the least authority carries the most load.
Span of control
How many direct reports one manager can carry well, and what breaks past it.
Execution quality
The gap between what a team decided and what a team shipped.
Decision velocity
How fast a call travels from raised to owned to done.
Manager enablement
The support layer that turns a promoted expert into a functioning manager.

Meetings

7 pages

What makes a meeting worth having: decisions, owners, next steps, and the habits that keep meetings from eating the week.

Meeting effectiveness
Whether a meeting produced a decision, an owner, and a next step.
Meeting hygiene
The input habits: agenda, invite list, timeboxing, notes.
Action item ownership
Why one named owner beats shared responsibility.
Meeting load
The share of a manager's week booked by other people.
Decision log
The three-line record that stops a decision being relitigated.
Meeting scorecard
Scoring a recurring meeting so you can see the pattern.
Async update
What to send instead of the status meeting you just cancelled.

Conversations

7 pages

The conversations that determine whether a team functions: 1:1s, feedback, accountability, and the hard talks most managers put off too long.

1:1 meeting
The recurring conversation where most issues surface late.
Difficult conversation
The structure that keeps a hard conversation from becoming a fight.
Skip-level meeting
What to ask when you are two layers away from the work.
Feedback loop
Making feedback a rhythm rather than an event.
Stop, start, continue
A three-prompt framework that survives a nervous manager.
Psychological safety
The condition that determines whether anyone tells you the truth.
Accountability conversation
The structured follow-up when a commitment is missed, before it becomes a pattern.

Performance and retention

7 pages

How to assess what someone is delivering, address the gaps early, and keep the people worth keeping before they have already decided to leave.

Performance review
What the conversation is for, once the form is filled in.
Underperformance
Naming the gap early, in a way that can still be fixed.
Promotion decision
Deciding, and then telling the person who did not get it.
Quiet quitting
The disengagement pattern, and what it usually says about the manager.
Retention risk
Spotting the person who has already started leaving.
Goal-setting conversation
Connecting a report's targets to team outcomes, not just activities.
Onboarding a new report
The first 30 days, from the manager's side.

AI at work

6 pages

What AI tools actually do in a management context: where they save time, where they fall short, and what a manager still has to do themselves.

AI coaching for managers
What an always-on coach does that a quarterly workshop cannot.
AI meeting assistant
The difference between transcribing a meeting and improving it.
AI note taker
Where automated notes help, and where they add unread documents.
Manager copilot
An assistant with context on your team, not just your calendar.
Meeting intelligence
Turning a quarter of meetings into a pattern you can act on.
AI in performance management
What to automate, and what a human has to say out loud.

Specific situations

7 pages

Concrete guidance for the situations that do not fit a general framework: inheriting a team, managing a former peer, running 1:1s across time zones.

1:1 questions for a disengaged senior engineer
A script for the report who has stopped pushing back.
Managing a team you inherited
The first six weeks with people you did not hire.
First-time manager, 90-day plan
What to do, in order, when you have never managed before.
Managing a former peer
Rebuilding the relationship after the promotion.
Running 1:1s across time zones
Keeping a rhythm when the overlap is two hours.
Managing 12 or more direct reports
Triage when the span is past what one person can hold.
Meeting effectiveness for engineering managers
The same metric, applied to standups, reviews, and incident calls.

Comparisons

6 pages

Side-by-side explanations for terms that often get confused: what each one is for, where the overlap is, and which to use when.

OKRs vs KPIs
Which framework drives execution and which one only tracks it.
1:1 vs performance review
One is a rhythm, the other is a record.
Delegation vs micromanagement
Where the line is, and how to find it before trust breaks.
AI coach vs executive coach
Cost, availability, and what each is actually good at.
Meeting notes vs decision log
Why one gets read and the other does not.
Status update vs decision request
How to tell whether a meeting is there to inform or to decide.
Leap meeting support

See execution intelligence in your own meetings

Leap sits in the meetings you already run, surfaces the decisions and owners in real time, and shows you where follow-through breaks down before it costs you a quarter.

Book a demo