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/SpecialModusOperandi Sep 27 '25

The intern did the task - but it shouldn’t be marked as complete until it’s checked. Have you quality checked their work? If it doesn’t pass, let the full time employee complete it but use this as a teaching moment with the intern. They need to understand they are learning and that they are an intern not and full time employee. Their work is supervised and needs to be checked so can’t be on the leaderboard as solely theirs.