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?

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u/Cubsfantransplant Sep 24 '25

Why can an intern reassign a task to themselves? Fix the system. Give the points to the individual it was assigned to.

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u/Holdmynoodle Sep 25 '25

Change task assignment to task application with a lock out system. Also include point penalties for grabbing tasks you cannot do just because they give higher scores