Warm Introductions Before You Leave a Job: 6 Worth Making
Warm introductions are the underrated last act of a departing employee. In the two weeks before you leave, connect your successor to your key stakeholders, put two people who should have known each other by now in the same thread, and route requests to whoever picks them up. Send one pair at a time, by email, in plain language.
Most departure playbooks stop at the handover doc and the goodbye email. That is a mistake. The introduction is where your judgment about people gets to keep working after you leave.
Here is the short answer. Six pairs are worth making before your last day. Each takes ten minutes to send and pays off for months.
1. Your replacement + your three-to-five most important stakeholders
This is the obvious one, and most people still botch it. They send a group email that names the successor and expects the stakeholders to reach out. Nobody reaches out.
The version that works is one email per stakeholder. Name what you two worked on together in a real sentence. Name one thing your replacement is strong at that matches what the stakeholder cares about. Suggest a fifteen-minute intro call in the next two weeks. If you have the calendars, book it before you send.
Do this for the three to five people whose next request would otherwise land in your successor's inbox with no context. A five-day handover plan makes room for these calls in week two.
2. The two coworkers who should already know each other
Every mid-sized company has these pairs. A senior engineer and a senior designer who solve the same class of problem from two directions and have never once been in the same meeting. A finance lead and a product manager who each keep a spreadsheet the other would kill to see. A skip-level from your old team and a skip-level from an adjacent org who would find one call together clarifying.
You know who these pairs are because you have been the informal go-between for months. Write it down while you still remember. Then send a plain two-paragraph email that names why they should talk and lets them pick a date.
3. A junior teammate + someone senior who could sponsor them
This is the introduction most people wish somebody had made for them. A promising junior on your team and a senior person one or two rungs up who would recognize them if they asked to grab coffee.
Keep it low-stakes. Name one specific piece of work the junior did. Suggest a thirty-minute conversation about that piece of work, not a mentorship ask. Sponsorship, when it happens, grows from small first meetings the senior person actually enjoys. Your job is to make the first meeting happen. Do not overload the ask.
4. Your old boss + the person taking over your work
Even if your replacement will report to your old boss directly, a five-line introduction that names one thing you learned about how your boss works, and one thing your replacement should ask about early, saves them a month of guessing. Do this the week before your last day, not the last morning.
Your final 1:1 with your manager is the moment to ask whether there is anyone else they want you to make an introduction to before you go. Most managers, when asked, will name two or three.
5. Someone in your outside network + a colleague who would genuinely help them
This one is the professional favor most people forget. You have contacts outside the company who occasionally ping you with a question you cannot answer as well as someone on your team could.
Before you leave, pick two of them. Match each to the colleague on your team who would give the better answer. Send the introduction with one honest sentence about why this person is worth their time. It costs you ten minutes and it strengthens both sides of your network at once.
6. The two people who fight over the same ambiguous piece of work
You know the seam. Two teams whose scope overlaps in one specific area, and whichever of them your successor happens to talk to first will claim it. If you leave without naming the seam, the fight starts on week three.
The intro to send: a short email to the two leads, in the same thread, that says here is the piece of work I have been holding, here is how I have been dividing it, and here is who I think should own each half going forward. You are not deciding for them. You are giving them a starting point that keeps your successor out of a turf argument.
The pivot: who else deserves an introduction?
The six pairs above are the ones you know off the top of your head. There is a second list you do not. It is the people your calendar has quietly recorded for the last twelve months - the recurring 1:1s that shaped a project, the cross-functional partners who showed up in three consecutive quarters, the quiet contributor who joined every launch call and never spoke.
Your memory over-weights the last two months. Your calendar does not.
Before you send the introductions, run one calendar audit. It Was Great Working With You takes a calendar export and returns the list of people you actually worked with, ranked by time spent together over the last year. It surfaces the pairs you would have missed. It takes about three minutes.
How to write the introduction email
Five lines is the right length. Any longer and it reads like you are trying to earn credit for the introduction.
Line one: the two people, cc'd, first names only in the salutation.
Line two: one sentence naming what you two worked on together and why you are leaving. One line, not a paragraph. This is not the farewell email.
Line three: one sentence naming what the other person does and what they are good at. Specific, not generic.
Line four: one sentence naming why you think the two of them should talk. What does one of them have that the other needs? What decision would go better if they were in touch?
Line five: turn it over. "I'll step out of the thread - you two pick a time." Then actually stop responding.
Subject line: Introduction - [Name] and [Name]. No cleverness. It gets opened.
Delivery, timing, and what not to do
Send introductions in the middle of your final week, not the last day. The last day is for saying goodbye, not for setting up work meetings your successor still has to run. Middle of the week gives both people time to reply and agree on a date before you lose email access.
Send them one pair at a time. A batch email with five introductions in it lands as a group announcement and reads as low-priority. A one-off email with two names in it reads as a real request and gets a real reply.
Do not introduce people you barely know to each other. The introduction only carries weight because you know both sides. If you cannot say one specific true thing about each person, do not send it.
Do not use the introduction to hand off unfinished business you should have wrapped up yourself. If the two people you are connecting will inherit an open problem, name it explicitly. Do not hide it inside a friendly-sounding intro.
Do not promise things on your successor's behalf. Say what your successor does and what they are good at. Do not commit their time or their answer.
Edge cases
If you are on gardening leave and your access is already cut, send the introductions from your personal email. Cc your work email if it is still receiving. Keep the note the same.
If you were laid off, still send them. The introductions do not have to explain the reason for your departure. A short line - "my last day here is Friday" - is enough. The value of the introduction stands on its own.
If your relationship with a specific stakeholder is rocky, skip the personal introduction and put your successor's name in the handover doc instead. A cold email lands better than a warm introduction that reads as performative.
If your replacement has not started yet, the introduction still works. Address it to the person who will be their manager. Note who is filling in until the new hire arrives. Your job is to remove the guesswork, not to book the meeting.
What the person on the receiving end will remember
They will not remember the exact words. They will remember that you thought of them, on your way out, and took ten minutes to make their next month easier. That is the whole reputation you leave behind. Not the group email. Not the LinkedIn post. The two-name introductions that landed in the right inboxes at the right moment.
Before you write any of them, spend a few minutes building the list of who those pairs actually are. It Was Great Working With You pulls the names off your calendar so you do not miss the ones you would.
Further reading: The people you'll forget to say goodbye to when you leave your job.
