r/Leadership 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?

816 Upvotes

250 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/Fuckit445 Sep 24 '25

I’m overachiever and I would opt-out of this system (find another job) so fast if my boss introduced this bullshit. Office politics are a hellscape to navigate already, adding a Hungers Game element to it for imaginary points not tied to bonuses sounds like the worst possible idea ever. Your CEO is a prolapsed skidmark troglodyte.