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"When you teach people to be victims you actually cause them to suffer." - Konstantin Kisin
But let me put it this way, the moment we allowed and encouraged the victim mentality we made people weak or as we like to call them; snowflakes, described as, "People with an inflated sense of uniqueness, an unwarranted sense of entitlement, or who are overly emotional, easily offended, and unable to deal with opposing opinions and the reality of life."
But how did we encourage the victim mentality?
By removing responsibility and accountability from people and replacing it with blame, self-centeredness, and self-pity. We let people blame others for their failures, low performance, circumstances, and choices. We let people "mental health" their way out of accountability and even performance. Having a past or a context (we all do) doesn't excuse anyone from responsibility and accountability. It explains things but what are you going to do about it? That is the real question there because you cannot stay in that situation and you cannot use that over and over again to justify your shortcomings.
This mentality is a massive issue not only for the individuals (they cannot see how much they hurt themselves) but for organisations too because the idea of a high-performing organisation is over. You simply cannot have a high-performing organisation with the current labour supply where everyone requires a support system or perfect circumstances to be functional. That doesn't exist!
You cannot build high-performing organisations with snowflakes.
High-performing people don't blame others or their circumstances. They don't wait around to be told what and how to do things, they figure it out. They don't say, "Nobody told or trained me." They understand what they have to do and learn in the flow of work.
High-performing people aren’t sensitive. They don’t get offended by feedback, feel anxious because someone looked at them "the wrong way," or get rattled by a loud argument in the office. They're open to feedback, even if it's tough to hear because they use it to improve. Unlike "snowflakes," who see feedback as a personal attack. High performers don't think that they are good as they are. They know that they can always do much better!
High-performing people know how to handle and navigate conflict. They don’t see every disagreement or differing opinion as an argument. Instead of labelling those who disagree, they recognize that differing views are opportunities to learn. They don’t run to the manager or HR because they didn’t like the tone of an email from Steven—they go directly to Steven, clarify the situation, and move forward. They don’t call in sick the next day because things got stressful or because Steven was mean. They manage relationships like professionals.
I could go on but you get the picture.
There’s no high performance with "snowflakes." How can there be when you can’t even give feedback without someone getting offended, labelling you as toxic, and dragging you to HR, where you waste days explaining you were just doing your job? High performance can’t exist when people quit at the slightest inconvenience. Newsflash: most things in life won’t be to your liking. Are you going to quit every time something doesn’t go your way?
There’s no high performance without responsibility and accountability. How can there be when you can’t even ask someone why the job isn’t done without them blaming you, or others, or breaking down in tears to talk about childhood traumas? (True story! And the trauma? Her dad yelled at her once—seriously, if that counts, we’re all traumatized!)
There’s no high performance in a culture of victimhood. How can there be when the focus is on who’s winning the “victimhood Olympics” or who’s oppressing whom? High performance can’t thrive when organizations spend their energy managing the weak and average employees, who always have an excuse for why things didn’t get done, instead of empowering their top performers to drive the company forward. High performance is about delivering results, not stories or excuses.
There’s no such thing as high performance without strong social skills. How could there be when someone lacks the basic ability to work, coexist, and collaborate with others? How can managers and leaders focus on work-related skills when they’re stuck teaching people lessons they should have learned on the playground? When parents let their kids stay in their rooms watching TV, playing games, or scrolling through social media, they deprived them of the social skills necessary for navigating life. They didn’t learn how to communicate, negotiate, share, handle a bully, stand up for themselves, or banter without taking offence. They missed out on understanding the limits of joking and teasing because no one pushed back when they crossed the line, so now everything escalates into severe bullying. They haven’t learned how to collaborate effectively with others. Growing up, no one called them out when they were wrong, so when they face feedback at work, they don’t know how to handle it. Instead, they get offended, become defensive, withdraw (back to their “safe space”), blame others, label the culture as toxic, or quit.
Companies don't understand how parents raising their children today will affect their bottom line in the near future. If they want to protect their future, they need to establish boundaries that push back against the "snowflake" mentality. They should stop fostering weakness through overly lenient policies and initiatives and instead set clear, strong performance standards. Businesses shouldn’t shy away from being unapologetic about who they are. If that means requiring everyone to work in the office, so be it. If they reject trendy, "woke" HR strategies, so be it. If they want to pay top performers more than average ones, so be it.
Companies should not be pressured into making decisions just to appease others, as it's neither beneficial to their workforce nor to the business itself. I’ll go as far as saying this: If organizations aren’t careful, catering to every demand of overly sensitive individuals could lead to their downfall.
Employers' role is to create a healthy, fair, and respectful work environment with boundaries, discipline, and structure. People not only like that they also need that. But the question is; HR, what is your strategy to address this? Because you cannot just go around creating strategies without understanding the people you are working with.
Redesign your organisations and know what you want to achieve with your people.
HR & Their Non-Existing Talent Management
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