Thank you messages for a colleague

Six messages you could actually send

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.

1. Thank you for covering for me last week. It can't have been convenient, and you didn't make a single thing of it, which somehow made it easier to accept. I owe you one, and I'd like that on the record.

   Continue writing with message 1

2. Thank you for the honest feedback. The polite version would have been easier for you to give and a lot less use to me. I've changed how I do this because of that conversation, so it landed.

   Continue writing with message 2

3. You stayed back to finish something that wasn't yours to finish, and nobody outside the two of us knows you did it. Thank you. I've told the people who ought to know, for whatever that's worth.

   Continue writing with message 3

4. Thank you for teaching me the shortcut instead of just doing it for me. It took you longer that way, which I only worked out about a week afterwards. I've used it nearly every day since.

   Continue writing with message 4

5. You did the unglamorous half of that work and then let me present the rest of it. Thank you, and for the record, I know which half was harder. Next time we swap, and I mean that.

   Continue writing with message 5

6. You did the unglamorous half of that project and then let me stand up and present the rest of it, which nobody asked you to do. Thank you. For the record, I know which half was harder, and I've said so to the people who needed to hear it. Next time we swap.

   Copy

Writing your own

Be concrete about what they absorbed. Thanks for your support is what a form letter says. Thanks for taking the Friday deployment so I could be at the hospital names the cost they paid, and that is the part that makes it worth reading twice.

Keep it warm but not familiar beyond the actual relationship. A colleague you have worked beside for four years and one you met in March get different notes; writing the closer one to the newer person is more uncomfortable than saying nothing.