Copy their manager on the thank you
A private thank you is kind. The same words with their manager copied in can change how someone's year is assessed.
The BeingKind editorsPublished How this is written
Why it lands
Managers assemble performance reviews from a thin and heavily biased evidence base — mostly what they personally witnessed and whatever the person remembered to claim. Unsolicited praise from outside the team is rare enough that it gets kept, quoted and used. You are not just being nice; you are putting evidence into a system that is usually starved of it, at precisely the moment it is free for you to do.
How
Write it to the person and copy the manager, rather than writing about them behind their back — being praised in front of your boss without warning can feel like being handled. Be specific about what they did and what it saved you. Two sentences beats a paragraph of adjectives.
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