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Some Influencers Just Aren’t Worth Placating

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Some Influencers Just Aren't Worth Placating Recent news of Carnival Cruise Group’s decision to ban two “influencers” after a run of negative reviews has sparked a spirited debate online.

Many are quick to label the move as corporate censorship, but a closer look reveals it’s often just basic business sense. This wasn’t about silencing genuine critique—it was about a company recognizing that some forms of “feedback” are merely thinly veiled demands from the perpetually aggrieved.

These influencers weren’t ordinary customers offering fair assessments. Their dissatisfaction seemed to operate as a business model, consistently leveraged for perks like free cruises, suite upgrades, and even a comped wedding. When complaints reliably yield such significant compensation, dissatisfaction ceases to be an affliction and instead becomes a profitable asset. To be banned for one’s “opinion,” when that “opinion” primarily consists of a tiresome enumeration of petty defects after repeated indulgence, isn’t martyrdom—it’s simply mistaking self-importance for actual consequence.

More broadly, this incident reflects the growing commodification of outrage in the digital age. Social media thrives on grievance, and the influencer economy demands perpetual dissatisfaction. Negative reviews generate more engagement, effectively turning critique into performance rather than honest, balanced appraisal. The notion that discomforts—however generously compensated—constitute a public service worthy of widespread dissemination speaks volumes about the peculiar vanity of our time.

Carnival’s move isn’t a crackdown; it’s a necessary correction. Businesses have their limits—budget cruise lines cater to specific market segments and set clear expectations. When influencers review these companies as if they were luxury brands and consistently post negative reviews based on unmet, unrealistic expectations, they unfairly damage the company’s reputation. Removing those who ceaselessly publicize a company’s purported defects, even after extensive placation, isn’t suppression—it’s long-overdue pragmatism.

Criticism is healthy, but the expectation that companies must endlessly placate serial complainers isn’t consumer advocacy—it’s entitlement masquerading as accountability.

Don’t Use Personality Assessments to Sort the Talented from the Less Talented

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Personality assessments have featured in personality development and career counseling for almost a century. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and other tests form the basis for helping people deal with conflict, understand team interplay, outline career search, sharpen decision-making skills, and cope with stress.

Personality Assessments Cannot Predict Performance

Even as their use has grown significantly over the last two decades, personality assessments—including strengths inventories, and emotional intelligence assessments—have been criticized at length:

  • An individual’s personality cannot be summed up by a personality assessment. Individuality is described best by continuous (not discrete), normally-distributed attributes. For example, the MBTI Step I classification of individuals into 16 categories (or 4 dichotomies from Carl Jung‘s book Psychological Types (1921)) does not encapsulate the full range of personality variance.
  • An individual’s behavior cannot be limited to one side of a dichotomy. For instance, every person can be outgoing and assertive in the external world (extraversion,) while requiring time for some contemplation (introversion).
  • Many academic studies question the tests’ predictive validity and poor reliability. Moreover, personality assessments have poor test-retest consistency. Test takers have been shown to change at least one dichotomy when they take the MBTI Step I survey a second time.
  • Personality assessments can initiate confirmation bias (“Barnum Effect”)—the test scores are self-fulfilling because people tend to behave in ways that are predicted for them. In other words, a person who learns that he or she is “outgoing” according to MBTI may behave that way.
  • Personality tests are decidedly fakeable, especially when used to evaluate future career opportunities. All personality assessments are contingent on a degree of honesty, but MBTI test-takers are often motivated to match up to extraverted, sensing, thinking, and judging (ESTJ) proclivities in the modern organization.
  • Assessments are regularly offered as universally applicable. Not only do they tend to mirror the biases of the test developers, but also they are skewed in preference of the social groups the developer studied.

Personality Assessments are Starting Points for Change, Not a Predictor of the Outcome

Academics have long acknowledged the previously mentioned criticisms of personality assessments. They’ve argued fruitfully that many of the criticisms should be directed to how HR practitioners understand personality tests and use them in the development arena.

MBTI and many other personality assessments were never intended to sort the talented from the less talented. They are designed for the individual who takes the assessment, and not for the HR practitioner. In other words, personality assessments were designed to help individuals discover their underlying preferences regarding learning styles, problem-solving styles, self-awareness, ethical inclinations, emotional intelligence, and stress management.

Intended for Increasing Self-awareness, Not Appraisal

On the contrary, HR practitioners tend to interpret test scores speciously to gauge behavior, rather than as pointers of categorical preferences. Besides, HR practitioners often fail to factor in the test-takers’ past and current environmental influences.

And then there’s the risk of people being pigeonholed or pushed into a particular course regardless of his or her preferences. HR practitioners and career counsellors who put too much emphasis on personality assessments may compartmentalize people into rigid categories. This flies in the face of a central tenet of the MBTI premise—that individuals could choose to act against their preferred type if the occasion demands it. People’s attitudes and behaviors often change over time because of emotional experiences or socialization into specific work and social cultures.

Idea for Impact: Use Personality Assessments to Facilitate Self-Awareness, Not for Categorization or as Predictors of Achievement

If you’re a manager or a HR practitioner, don’t use personality assessments to categorize people or as predictors of achievement. Encourage people to take personality tests, but help them interpret these pieces of data about themselves—only they could make sense of test results in the context of their life history, social environment, and ambitions for career and life.

How to Write a Job Description for Your Present Position: Part 3

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Preamble

This article concludes a series of three articles that describes how to get clarity about your present role in your organization and write an effective job description.

Write Your Job Description

After completing a thorough job analysis, you should have a list of responsibilities and goals for your position. Here is how to organize this list and write a formal job description:

  • A job description should be a high-level synopsis of the expectations of your role. It need not be all-encompassing or list specific tasks you required of you (that is the function of a ‘work-plan,’ where you translate your job description into a more-detailed list of tasks, projects and measures.)
  • Prioritize your ideas and responsibilities. Group ideas by functional theme if possible. Each theme can then be written as a paragraph (or bullet point) in your job description.
  • List no more than four or five paragraphs of responsibilities. Depending on your position, you may not need a very detailed list of responsibilities. For example, a worker on an assembly line may have just a single paragraph in his job description while an administrative assistant may have a more complex description of duties organized into three or four paragraphs of responsibilities.
  • Each paragraph can consist of as many sentences as necessary to describe a responsibility precisely. Begin each sentence with a verb in present tense. See examples below.
  • If your job involves supervising other employees, include the scope of responsibilities—coaching, training, conducting performance reviews, etc.

Get Concurrence from Your Supervisor

In your next one-on-one meeting with your supervisor, set aside some time to discuss your job description. Ask, “Is this what you expect of me? Is this in line with how you and our management see my role? Am I missing any responsibility or initiative? Do you see anything differently?”

Consider translating this job description into a more detailed work-plan that expands your responsibilities into a more thorough list of projects, initiatives and goals, and the corresponding metrics and targets. This work-plan along with your job description can establish a basis for measurement and job appraisal.

Revise Often and Maintain

Organizations, their objectives, routines and expectations constantly change. Keep your job descriptions current and accurate. Share your job description with your supervisor as part of the performance review process and continually seek agreement on how he sees your job.

Job Description Example 1: Software Architect

  • Research and develop algorithms for automatic parameter-based design of passenger car engines and their machining process illustrations. Implement process-planning software in C++ and integrate an interface with a CAD software.
  • Develop and implement algorithms to translate triangulated computer models into boundary representation data structures and recognize geometric features for design and machining.
  • Research and develop algorithms for automatic conversion of two dimensional orthographic projections of mechanical engineering designs into three-dimensional solid models.

Job Description Example 2: Project Manager

  • Coordinate new projects with Marketing. Write software technical profile from customer requirements. Develop and execute actionable plans for development and implementation of new software. Manage relationships and facilitate cross-functional issue resolution between marketing, customer support and customers.
  • Recruit and supervise five software engineers. Manage engineers’ work loads and ensure contribution. Track, prioritize, report and coordinate the needs and progress of their projects.
  • Coordinate software programming between offices in cities A and B and track measures for on-time performance of projects.

Concluding Thoughts

One of the leading causes of frustration and discontent for employees is the lack of clarity on what is expected on their roles. From an organization’s perspective, employees who do not understand their roles will fail to deliver.

By writing an effective job description for your present position, you can bridge the gap between the expectations of your role and your performance on your job. This generates better results for you, your management and the organization as a whole.