This is Help Wanted, the show that makes your work work for you. I'm Jason Pfizer,

editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur magazine.

And I'm money expert Nicole Lappin. On Tuesdays, Jason and I answer the helpline and help

callers solve their work problems. And on Thursdays, I give you one way to improve your work and build a career or company you love.

And it starts now.

The best question that you can ever ask is why? And the worst question you can ever ask is why? Why? Well, here's why. Right now, I'm

going to guess you are being impacted by someone else's decisions and someone else's actions.

Maybe you're not thinking about it exactly like that, but let's step back. Maybe your company made a big change. Maybe your boss issued some new order. Maybe a client made an unexpected decision. Maybe a friend did something that you were not happy with. Either way, someone else acted. Now you are stuck with the consequences.

Your job is more frustrating, your work is more complicated, your future is less clear.

And there is one question that you want to ask and it is, why? Why are you doing this? Why are you doing this to me? But wait, before you ask that question, and it is an important question,

you have to know that everything rides on how you ask it.

So before you get there, you really need to appreciate, truly, openly, earnestly appreciate how that other person is thinking.

Today I will show you how to do that by building what I call a logic chain.

This is such an important step before you ever get to asking why.

There was work to be done before you ask why.

And to start to show what that work is to show why it's so important,

I'm going to tell you about a senior manager at a large company

who learned this lesson the hard way.

All right, lately I've been doing a gratifying

kind of consulting.

Some large companies have been going through big change and then they have asked me to come in and speak with groups of their highly valued, highly concerned employees.

So these are people who have now navigated some major shifts in their work.

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