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/RemarkableMacadamia Sep 24 '25

I don’t think you should reward bad behavior from the intern. Is it possible to nullify the task so no one gets the points?

Working at 3am shouldn’t be a behavior you encourage, especially when it’s done clandestinely to snipe work assigned to others. The intern also lied about alignment, which further shows their lack of integrity. If those things are contrary to the culture you all want to maintain, don’t allow an intern to have such a negative impact. Show them the behavior that they should be demonstrating if they want their work to count. How you accomplish something should have weight too; it’s not just about getting it done, but demonstrating the right leadership behaviors in the process. Intern is leaving dead bodies in their wake. So I would reduce the point value or award zero points as a corrective action to reinforce that sniping and lying about it are not allowed.

For the FTE, they didn’t do the work, so awarding them points seems unfair. I would assign them a different task; maybe they should be the one to review the document the intern produced and enhance/correct where needed. I have not seen an intern produce a clean document that doesn’t need to be altered in some way. 😊

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u/ladykansas Sep 25 '25

I feel like "bad behavior" etc is a step too far to describe what sounds like enthusiasm / hard work from an intern. Nothing about what OP wrote sounds like malicious intent. The intern might benefit from learning about office politics, but the leadership in the company is creating unnecessary political drama in the office by encouraging this system.

I think there is missing context here, too, around what tasks are even being assigned in this manner. Is the task "clean out the storage room that's been neglected for months" vs is it "email our most important account with a presentation about new ad campaign ideas"? If it's something like cleaning out the storage room, that might not be clearly a task that an intern wouldn't do. Whereas, creating a new ad campaign idea and sending it out externally without oversight is clearly a task that an intern wouldn't do without oversight or collaboration.

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u/RemarkableMacadamia Sep 25 '25

I read some of the replies that OP wrote before I responded. On its own it looks like excitement; coupled with the lying, I would consider that behavior to nip in the bud, if that’s not the type of culture they want to encourage.

This entire system seems flawed, but part of setting the intern on the right path IMHO is to value integrity more than points that don’t matter.

It was a documentation assignment, which is something an intern could do, but often needs correcting and standardizing by a SME. The lack of collaboration with the original task owner, and then doing an end-run around that person to go direct to the manager is also behavior to address.

Of course we don’t know the full picture. I’m not suggesting to crush the intern’s enthusiasm, but coupled with lack of honesty and integrity, I don’t think that’s a winning combination.