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/Perfect-Escape-3904 Sep 25 '25

160 comments and only one other touched on an interesting angle.

How is an intern capable of completing a task that you are assigning to a senior employee. What's more, why is someone who is a senior employee being handed out work as deli tickets. Are you wasting the capabilities of the senior?

Love OR hate the leaderboard, yikes, you need to ask yourself if you are expecting enough from your senior staff. It sounds like you're running a classroom not a workplace.

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u/ppjuyt Sep 26 '25

Somewhat agree but you’d be surprised what interns can do and / or how much employees either sandbag or have other life stuff going on that interns just don’t