Intervou
An Intervou with Karl Greif
In Conversation
Karl's interview, in full
A lightly edited transcript of Karl Greif's Intervou video interview.
What qualities do you believe define an effective modern leader?
I think the qualities that define an effective modern leader, to me, are empathy, kindness, and dedication. Being able to put yourself in your employees' shoes. Everybody's worked for that boss that they just really hate working for, and I've always used that as a model to be the opposite of. So kindness, getting on someone's level and rolling up your sleeves and working right alongside them, showing that you're committed to the task as well. That's what defines an effective modern leader to me.
How can I make my employees want to work for me? Again, working alongside them, helping them get through daily tasks, completing the same roles as them is one thing I do in my department. And really just having an understanding of where they come from when they're having personal issues with their life, and if they're missing deadlines or whatnot, just being able to understand, based on your own experience, that they're human as well. Sometimes you need to give some grace and that always goes a long way in the way they show up for you. So how can I be a leader that somebody actually wants to work for? That's how I model my current role.
In what ways are you fostering innovation within your organization?
I'm fostering innovation within my organization mostly by implementing all these new AI tools that are coming out. We work in video production, so it's made our lives a lot easier. We're able to create images and videos out of thin air just by typing in a text prompt, and where we used to have to go to stock media libraries to search for images and video clips, now we can tell these AI tools exactly what we need and in many cases it provides great results.
So we're using image generators, video generators, we're using AI voice generators. We don't have to wait on voice over artists and pay them to create these voice recordings for the videos we're making. So implementing a lot of AI tools. Of course, we're using ChatGPT to help us write scripts, write content. We're using tools to help us schedule content. But image generation and video generation has been huge helping us tell stories and just produce better work.
How do you stay ahead of emerging challenges and opportunities in your field?
I stay ahead of emerging challenges and opportunities in my field by dedicating time each week to learning new tools, learning new strategies that can help make me more efficient and make me a better producer, marketer. I think it's important to stay up on the new technology that comes out and I'm always finding ways to implement that into my workflow. Sometimes there's a learning curve, so you've got to dedicate a little bit of time to learning how to use these new tools, and as many opportunities as I can to implement them into my work, I take advantage of.
AI's a hot topic right now and there's tons of AI tools and opportunities in the field that I work in, which I love. So it's just about rolling up your sleeves and getting your hands dirty with all this new stuff we've got going on. I love it, it's made my job a lot easier in many ways. It's made my work better in many ways, and I'll continue to focus on staying at the forefront of AI, honestly, and helping my team implement these new tools into their workflow as well.
Looking back, what would you tell your younger self starting out in this profession?
If I could talk to myself when I was starting out in this career, my one main piece of advice would be don't be afraid to put yourself out there. The more you put yourself out there, the more opportunities you're going to find. So whether it's posting content on social media, on LinkedIn, getting out to networking events, throughout my career, the more I've put myself out there, the more opportunities I've found, the more luck has found me, and now I'm all over the internet, so people just find me by chance and opportunities come to me. And it's all because of how much I put myself out there.
You start out earlier in your career, earlier in life, and you care a little bit too much about what people think about you if you show up on a video on Instagram or something. I think as you get further into your career and you mature a little bit, you care less and less, and that was a barrier for me when I was young, so that'd be my advice. Just go after it and get out there in the world and opportunities will find you.
What excites you most about the future of your field or role?
What excites me most about my field in video production and digital marketing is AI. There's new tools coming out every day and the ones we're already using have made our lives tremendously easier. We're a lot more productive. We make better work and it's only going to get better and better.
In addition to that I love the whole work from home culture. I've been working from home for a few years now and I love being able to have that autonomy in my life and really focusing on my career without the stresses of commuting to work and finding child care and all that kind of thing. So I'd say those are the two things that excite me most about my current field and my current role.
More Interviews
