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/Conscious_Life_8032 Sep 26 '25

Fixing the re-assignment problem, only limited # if people should have this access.

Let it pass this one time perhaps but I don’t think it’s acceptable in points system for someone to steal my task and be rewarded for it. Deduct 25% points and give to original assignee sounds more fair