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Farewell cards

What to write in a farewell card for your boss

For a manager moving on. Lines that thank them properly without reading as a reference letter.

  • Thank you for backing me when it would have been easier not to. I will take that with me for the rest of my career.

    Heartfelt

  • You made this a team people wanted to be on. That is much rarer than it should be, and we are going to feel it.

    Heartfelt

  • Thank you for the hard conversations as well as the easy ones. I learned more from the first kind.

    Heartfelt

  • Leaving us to fend for ourselves is a bold strategy. We wish you well and will be calling constantly.

    Funny

  • We have decided your leaving present is unrestricted access to our questions, in perpetuity. Congratulations.

    Funny

  • Good luck in the new role. We have already started arguing about who gets your chair.

    Funny

  • Thank you for everything. Best of luck.

    Short

  • You will be missed here. All the best.

    Short

  • Good luck with the next chapter. It has been a pleasure.

    Short

  • Thank you for your leadership and support over the past few years. Wishing you every success in your new role.

    Formal

  • It has been a genuine pleasure working for you. With best wishes for the future.

    Formal

  • Wishing you all the best in the next stage of your career, and thank you for everything you did for this team.

    Formal

When a manager leaves, the cards tend to split into two unhelpful piles: formal notes that could be about anyone, and jokes that lean on the hierarchy. Neither says what most people actually feel, which is usually some mix of gratitude and mild alarm about what happens next.

The useful thing to write is what they changed. Managers rarely get told which of their decisions mattered, and the leaving card is the last chance anyone will take to say it. Naming one thing they did for you specifically — the promotion they pushed, the week they told you to go home — is worth more than any summary of their career.

Three things worth getting right

  • Thank them for a decision, not for their general leadership. Decisions are specific and verifiable.
  • If they backed you personally, say so. That is the sentence they will remember.
  • Keep the jokes about the job, never about their management of you.

Common questions

Should the team send one card or individual cards?

One card from the whole team, every time. It reads as the team speaking rather than as individuals performing for a departing manager, and it spares everyone the question of who wrote the warmest note. A group card also lets remote and part-time people sign, which a card left on a desk never does.

What if you did not get on with them?

Write something brief, true and professional: "Best of luck in the new role." That is a complete and perfectly acceptable card. Do not use the card to settle anything, and do not write warmth you do not mean — everyone reading it, including them, can tell.

One card, signed by everyone

You have the words. Card Event collects everyone else in one link, with photos, video and voice notes, and no app or account for the people signing.

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Writing to someone else?

All card wording guides — lines for your boss and everyone else