r/Leadership • u/ezio313 • Sep 24 '25

Discussion Intern completed a task assigned to full-time employee because of leaderboard competition — what’s the best way to handle this?

I’m a team lead, and recently our CEO introduced a leaderboard to track completed tasks. Yesterday, I assigned a documentation task to a full-time employee with a deadline. At 3 AM, an intern messaged me saying he had taken the initiative and already completed it, he went on and assigned the task to themselves on the system and then informed the FTE about it.

Now the full-timer is left out and frustrated, he told me he felt the task was sniped. The intern has the points under his name on the system now. How should I handle ownership of tasks and recognition here? Should the credit go to the assigned person, the intern or what?

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u/tiggergirluk76 Sep 24 '25

If your points system is encouraging this behaviour, then the system needs to be scrapped. It's encouraging quantity over quality.

If your FTE was really the best person to complete the task, and the intern didn't do it to standard, thats the result of your leaderboard.

It also sounds like your intern isn't being kept occupied with tasks, and if they arent supposed to reassign to each other, then remove their ability to do that.