If your leaders can’t answer that, they’re starting in the wrong place.
A few weeks ago, I reconnected with a friend I hadn’t talked to in more than 25 years. We were great pals growing up—camp friends turned real-life friends in our early 20s—and then, like it happened so often back then, we lost touch. It’s hard to explain to anyone under 30 how easy it was to disappear before the digital age. I changed my phone number and moved, and just like that, someone could vanish from your life. No drama, no falling out. Just… gone.
Naturally, what brought us back together was summer camp. My friend’s youngest son was heading off to sleepaway camp for the first time, and as my friend tried to calm his nerves, he told him about how camp can be such a wonderful place to make great new friends. That memory nudged him to find me on LinkedIn (thank you, algorithm!), and within days, we were catching up like no time had passed.
That’s what happens in summer. Kids and adults alike travel to new places, have different experiences, meet strangers and, hopefully, make new friends. Building new relationships is fundamental. It’s how we connect, collaborate and survive. And at some point, along the way, we established that talking about the weather isn’t the only way to begin an interaction with another human—unless you’re a Southerner or Midwesterner.
“Where are you from?”
“What do you do?”
“How’d you get into that?”
These are ageless prompts for developing new relationships. They aren’t just icebreakers. They’re also how we build trust. Connection comes from learning someone’s story: where they’ve been, what they’ve experienced, what they care about. Before you know it, you find some common interests, and that’s how friendships are forged. Building rapport through language and conversation has been a winning formula for over 100,000 years.
Now consider what it’s like when someone doesn’t follow the formula. They dodge every question. You can’t get a sense of who they are. Now, if you’re just making small talk on a beach or a plane, it’s easy to conclude they’re just not in the mood to chat. Fair enough. But what about in a professional context? Picture someone at a conference or trade show. You ask where they’re from, who they work for and what they do. Instead of answering and returning the questions, they launch into jargon, strategy and what they plan to do next. Or, worse, imagine a job interview. You ask a standard “tell me about a time when” behavioral question. They respond with, “I’m focused on the future.” You probably end up feeling like something’s off—they don’t have the right experience for the role, or maybe they’re even hiding something. Interview over.
Now imagine that person is a company. I don’t mean to channel Mitt Romney when he said that corporations are people, but unfortunately a lot of companies do behave like that standoffish stranger on the plane or cagey interviewee, especially when they’re trying to sell themselves. They leap ahead to innovation, expansion and transformation yet skip the stories that build belief.
Leaders can be especially guilty of this misstep. Maybe they don’t want to focus on predecessors. Maybe they fear it’ll make them look backward. Or maybe—after years of acquisitions and turnover—they simply don’t have access to the memories. Maybe they can’t answer the simple questions like, “Where are you from?” and “How long have you been around?”
These aren’t trivia questions. They’re trust signals. They’re the types of cues that help people decide whether to engage with a brand, buy into a company or believe in a leader. As Gallup’s Vibhas Ratanjee recently wrote in Forbes, “Purpose becomes powerful when it becomes shared memory.” It’s not enough to announce your values—you have to show how they were shaped, lived and tested. In the article, titled “How Corporate Memory Drives Purpose, Culture And Employee Engagement,” Ratanjee recounted conversations with archivists and historians from IBM and Marriott about how these companies “lead with more clarity” by “building shared memory” that “gives people a place inside the organization’s long story.” History Factory’s new white paper, “How Smart Leaders Leverage Heritage Management To Create a Better Future,” echoes many of these sentiments.
So if your company were a person—at a barbecue, sales pitch or job interview—how would it do? Would it build rapport? Earn trust? Pass the behavioral interview? Or would it talk a lot, say very little and wonder later why no one followed up?
Our research has consistently found that consumers and employees alike want to know about your history—74% of consumers are interested in brand origin stories, and 85% of employees say knowing their company’s history creates a better work environment.
In other words, people want to know: So… where’re you from? And how did you get here?