There’s a certain type of work environment where managers are only half paying attention — they evaluate performance and reward people based on how they perform

There’s a certain type of work environment where managers are only half paying attention — they evaluate performance and reward people based on how they perform in meetings, but they don’t pay enough attention to look at the real performance of people over time. This rewards people who are good at being performative in meetings: They try to flex their importance (“it has been brought to my attention that…”) and they try to raise issues with everything because it makes them look like they’re on top of it all. The weird thing is that they don’t really understand what they’re doing most of the time. It’s just what they’ve been rewarded for in the past, so they’ve continued to do more of what has brought them rewards.