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Thank you cards

What to write in a thank you card for someone on your team

For a manager recognising someone's work. Lines that credit the effort precisely enough to be believed.

  • Thank you for the work on this. You took the least appealing part of the project and made it the part that actually held.

    Heartfelt

  • You did this under a deadline nobody should have agreed to, and you did it properly. Thank you.

    Heartfelt

  • Thank you for the quiet work: the tidying up, the checking, the things nobody notices until they are missing.

    Heartfelt

  • I have watched you get noticeably better at this over the last year. Thank you for the effort behind that, which I know was not small.

    Heartfelt

  • Thank you for making me look extremely competent in front of people whose opinion I care about. Your secret is safe.

    Funny

  • Thank you for being the person who reads the whole document. Every team needs exactly one and we got the good one.

    Funny

  • Thank you for everything on this project. Outstanding work.

    Short

  • Genuinely great work. Thank you.

    Short

  • Thank you for going above and beyond on this one.

    Short

  • Thank you for your hard work and commitment on this project. Your contribution was significant and much appreciated.

    Formal

  • With sincere thanks for the effort and care you brought to this. It has been recognised.

    Formal

  • Thank you for your excellent work. It has made a real difference to the team and to the outcome.

    Formal

Recognition from a manager is only worth something if it is evidently accurate. Praise that could have been written about anyone on the team gets read as a routine gesture, and routine gestures do not motivate anybody — in some cases they do the opposite, because they signal that nobody was really watching.

So put the evidence in. The specific piece of work, the constraint they were under, the outcome. If you can, name something only a person paying attention would know about: the unglamorous part, the week nobody else wanted, the quiet clean-up after everyone had moved on.

Three things worth getting right

  • Include the detail that proves you were paying attention. That is the whole mechanism.
  • Thank them for effort under constraint, not just for the result. Results are partly luck.
  • Where it is deserved, say it publicly too. Private thanks plus public credit is the pair that counts.

Common questions

What should a manager write in a thank you card?

One specific piece of work, the difficulty attached to it, and the effect it had. Three clauses is plenty. The single biggest improvement over a typical manager thank you note is deleting every adjective and replacing it with a fact.

Is it better to thank someone privately or in front of the team?

Both, doing different jobs. Public credit affects how colleagues see them; a written note is theirs to keep and to reread on a bad day. If you only have room for one, ask whether the person is more helped by status or by reassurance.

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 someone on your team and everyone else