My direct report is getting pretty cocky...

One of my employees, who is also my friend, whom I hired to save him from a terrible job a couple of years ago (Never hire your friends, folks), is starting to get a little cocky.

He is the type of employee who lacks self-sufficiency in his role. He will always wait for someone to tell him what to do rather than figuring it out himself. He's very aware of our company goals and what's going on because he attends all of the company meetings, so it's not like he doesn't know what's going on.

He's the type that wants to help everyone and seems useful to avoid being fired (he told me this). So, if I don't give him a clear task, he will sit around and wait for someone else to come and ask him for a favor and hyper-focus on that, despite it not being his job to do so. Basically, If I don't tell him what to do and how to do it, he would stare at the wall all week long.

An example conversation I have with him:

Me (Sam): "Hey John, what do you have on your plate this week? What are you working on?"
Him (John): "I don't know. You tell me."

That's the kind of attitude I'm dealing with. So I'm always left with micromanaging him. I think he prefers it that way. So, I'm giving him projects, feeding him ideas, and guiding him on how to complete them.

I've recently seen/heard him going around telling everyone that he's the one responsible for all these projects he is completing, and he's getting a lot of praise, and I love that for him. To me, that makes people feel good and feel ownership over their work. We work in social media, so whenever we receive comments from the public praising the work, he will be in the replies on his personal account, soaking in all the attention, saying things like, "Thanks! I'm John, I was the lead producer on this".

Normally, I'd be ecstatic that one of my employees was receiving all this love, however, our company culture is so twisted that I'm beginning to receive sarcastic remarks from other staff, and even the CEO, that "John is on fire, he's gunning for your spot, Sam." -- so essentially he is making people believe that he's responsible for all his success, when in reality, we are team of people. Every project we finish has several signatures on it.

I know this probably sounds like jealousy. I'm not jealous. My biggest issue is that he is claiming all this success even though there is a team of people with him, driving his success. Truthfully, the only reason I'm now seeing this as an issue is that other people at the company are starting to see him as the leader of the department.

Am I being petty or jealous? Should I let this go? Or does this sound odd to you? If so, any advice on ways I can fix this would be greatly appreciated.