Thank you messages
The risk with thanking a manager is that it reads as positioning. These six avoid it by being about something specific that has already happened and cannot be repeated.
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Continue writing opens that message in the card with the words already in it, so all that is left is to change a word and send it. The last message is the longest of the six, and it is the only one you have to copy across yourself.
Thank you for backing me in that room when it would have been easier not to. I found out afterwards what you'd said, and I've thought about it a lot since. It changed how I do this job.
Continue writing with message 1You gave me work I wasn't obviously ready for, and it would have been your problem if I'd got it wrong. Thank you for taking that on. I've tried to do the same for other people since.
Continue writing with message 2Thank you for telling me the hard version early instead of the kind version too late. It wasn't a comfortable conversation and it was the most useful one I've had here. I'd rather you knew that.
Continue writing with message 3You absorbed a great deal on this team's behalf that we mostly never heard about. Some of it we worked out later. Thank you for taking it quietly rather than passing it down, which was the easier option.
Continue writing with message 4I learned how to run a team by watching you do it, mostly on the days when it wasn't going well. Thank you for being straight with us then instead of managing us. That taught me more than the good weeks did.
Continue writing with message 5You put me on that account before I was obviously ready for it, and if it had gone wrong it would have been your problem and not mine. Thank you for taking that on. I've tried to do the same for other people since, and I understand now how uncomfortable it is.
Thank them for a decision, not for their qualities. You are a great manager is a compliment and slightly awkward; you gave me the Bengaluru account when nobody else would have is a fact, and it is the one they will remember years later.
Send it when there is nothing pending. A thank you that arrives the week before appraisals is read as a move, however genuine it is. After the project closes, or after you have left, it is unmistakably just a thank you.
A card, sealed, with one specific thing in it — not another line in a chat thread.
Write the thank youIt arrives as a sealed envelope they open on their phone.