A Career Is a Promise Finding Purpose, Success, and Fulfillment

Foreword - Dr. Heidi K. Gardner. Introduction. Chapter 1: A Career By Design. Chapter 2: Finding Purpose. Chapter 3: Setting Your Goals. Chapter 4: The Function of Goals. Chapter 5: Cultivating Cultural Intelligence. Chapter 6: Ensuring Success: Mentors & Sponsors. Chapter 7: The Leader Within You. Chapter 8: Finding Fulfilment

Biography

Robin Landa is a distinguished professor at Kean University and a globally recognized creativity and ideation expert. She is a bestselling author of books on idea generation, creativity, branding, advertising, and design. She has won numerous awards, and The Carnegie Foundation counts her among the "Great Teachers of Our Time." She is the author of twenty-five books, including Graphic Design Solutions, 6th ed., Strategic Creativity, and The New Art of Ideas. Harvard Business Review, Inc. Magazine, and Fast Company, among others, have published her articles. Through her teaching, writing, mentoring, and presentations, Landa has had a profound impact on thousands of careers, inspiring and educating countless creative professionals, CCOs, and CMOs, helping to shape thousands of successful careers.

From tips on identifying your purpose, cultural intelligence to cultivating mentors and sponsors, this book is packed with invaluable insights that will help readers achieve their career goals. Highly recommended!—Bernice Chao, co-author of the award-winning, The Visibility Mindset 

A Career is a Promise: Finding Purpose, Fulfillment, and Success levels the playing field by providing a road map to the realization of a career. From setting realistic goals and mitigating rejection to navigating the bumpy road to cultural competence, this book guides you through an interactive process of self-discovery and goal-generating activities as you prepare to enter the job market. It is a must-read for young multidisciplinary professionals starting or changing careers.—Audrey G. Bennett, University Diversity & Social Transformation Professor, Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design, University of Michigan

In a time when technology and innovation rapidly alter the workplace landscape, Prof. Landa offers a guide for finding your purpose in the promise you make to your career.  The blend of reflection exercises and assessments with her personal story and interviews will inspire you to define your career journey in a unique way. As a former university career services director, organization consultant, and management professor, I highly recommend this book to you regardless of your career phase: new job entrant, career pivoter or an emerging retiree. It will serve you well throughout the arc of your career.—Mary Cianni, PhD, Adjunct Faculty, MS in Executive Coaching & Organizational Consulting, NYU

Finding one’s career path, let alone a career passion involves reflection, research, and a plan. This positive guide comes with roadmaps, self-assessments, and clear directives on attaining a fulfilling career by design, not a career by happenstance.—Nicole van den Heuvel, Executive Director, Center for Career Development, Rice University, Houston, TX

Through diverse interviews and personal experience, Landa diligently makes us pause to analyze, and take charge of our lives with sensitivity and reflection. How we can better cultivate cultural and emotional intelligence, become upstanders advocating for multicultural perspectives, lead with empathy, and find contentment.—Archana Shekara, Professor of Graphic Design, Creative Director of Design Streak Studio, Co-Director of Ethnic Studies at Illinois State University, and founding member of South Asian Design Educators Alliance (SADEA)  

Robin Landa's book is an outstanding set of roadmaps, prompts, and  inner directed questions to guide you on how you can choose to spend a significant proportion of your adult years. Your Career!! Your career or job is a substantial aspect of self definition.
While parents, celebrities, and professionals are often our role models, and often major shapers of our career choices, Landa makes clear that many factors, some conscious, some unconscious, and some determination, determine our choice of job or career. And looking at our choices or lack thereof can enhance the work stage of life.
With wisdom from successful others, and from her own work with university students and others, she delightfully introduces us to a world of insights, and hope for meaningful career choices.
Any adult young or old contemplating career choices can profit from this book.  As a psychologist in practice for 50 years, this book helped me to retake the driver’s seat in my career and contemplation of what I can still do to enhance it!!—Barbara L.Blum, PhD, psychologist

Landa’s new book contains essential advice for job seekers. It helps those searching for a career identify their core values, non-negotiables and gets at the heart of why they are applying to certain positions. The worksheets, check lists, and other interactive elements help readers to identify their needs and wants so they can articulate those desires during an interview.  In addition to all the helpful guidance and activities, there are interviews with professionals sharing their career experience and advice throughout which puts a real-world emphasis on the process and lets the reader know they are not alone in the job search. After doing the activities in this book, readers will understand what they truly want in a career and how to be successful in the process of finding the right employment match.—Dr. Tricia M. Farwell, Associate Professor, School of Journalism, Middle Tennessee State University  

Landa just wrote the book we've all been waiting for; so critical it should be in the hands of everyone. Simply pragmatic, this intentional guide brings diverse voices and sage wisdom to anyone looking to own the adventure of a purpose-filled life far beyond work.—Herb Vincent Peterson, Associate Professor of Design, South Carolina School of the Arts, Anderson University

Robin has been a fantastic guest on my podcast. She has written a book detailing the journey towards career success and fulfillment. The journey to a successful career is no longer the straight 9-5, commute, Ivy League, corporate ladder pathway anymore. It takes careful introspection, definition of values, and what you will and will not accept in the workplace. There are some interviews with fantastic guests in there. Definitely worth checking out, for anyone interested in making more of an impact in today’s world.—Christopher H. Loo, MD-PhD, and Founder and CEO of Financial Freedom for Physicians Podcast

Robin is indeed leading positive change with her latest book. A great reminder that a career in advertising isn't linear, and requires more than great creative to be a leader in the industry.—Justin Epstein, director, Business Development, Critical Mass

A Career is a Promise goes beyond the ordinary career guides. Its universal appeal is rooted in its ability to transcend disciplines and industries, making it an ideal gift for a fresh-faced graduate unsure of their next steps or an experienced professional seeking a fulfilling second career.—NiRey Reynolds, Global Director Creative Excellence, Momentum Worldwide

As a marketer and career mentor for the past 20 years, A Career is a Promise brings a fresh perspective to the current professional branding and planning space. Bringing creativity, vision and a road map for success for students and professionals alike.—Donna Wertalik, M.S. Marketing, Director of Marketing Strategy & Analytics, Pamplin College of Business, Professor of Practice, Marketing Department, Virginia Tech

A Career is a Promise: Finding Purpose, Success, and Fulfillment comes from a distinguished professor and idea generation expert who tackles the subjects of goal-setting and career with equal intensity.

Her expertise in the fields of graphic design, branding, and advertising have resulted in many successful mentoring roles whose value is synthesized in this book. It offers not just a road map for success, but a guide on how to leverage personal strengths for maximum career impact.

At this point, it should be noted that although A Career is a Promise will likely be chosen for business readers, its broader appeal to a wider audience should not be overlooked. This book is for all disciplines and different career categories, not just business. Robin Landa interviewed professionals from different fields, such as a plastic surgeon, a designer, a tennis pro, and a body image activist, among others, to create advice and experiences that apply across industries, sectors, and professions.

Research-based advice here assumes a top-down distribution focus whereby leaders can connect with others, acting as mentors for their own success as well as the bigger picture of company creativity and advancement.

The wealth of lessons and exercises requires, of necessity, a mind willing to not only consider (and reconsider) business paradigms and strategies, but actively engage with and enact changes to strengthen and sharpen acuity and novel approaches to change.

Perhaps it's a good thing that "...careers don't always follow a straight and obstacle-free path from the ideal to actuality." In the creative spark and flow of learning lies newfound revelations and abilities to kick start one's career by defining objectives, values, and growth-oriented opportunities that often involve identifying mentors and dovetailing self-discovery with success.

The kind of audience open to doing the hard work to achieve extraordinary goals will be the leader motivated to absorb the wealth of examples, opportunities, and insights Robin Landa delivers in A Career is a Promise. This personality will recognize the book's standout value in deviating its contentions and course from more typical career guides, justifying its high price tag and connections to invaluable routines for career and personal transformation.

Landa assumes no prior knowledge of her subjects, breaking bigger-picture success into 'micro-goals' for easier absorption and translation and deployment into objectives:

"When you think about the outcomes of your goals, rather than see each as an end result, try to focus on accomplishing one that leads to the next. And if one doesn't work out, you have others to work on."

Step-by-step routines are accompanied by interviews with leaders who inject solid experience and philosophical reflection based on their own achievements and extraordinary lives. These examples are tapped from a wide variety of lives, from pioneering plastic and reconstructive surgeon Dr. Carl M. Truesdale to brand builder and consultant Mark S. Robinson (who wrote the book on diversity and advertising, Black on Madison Avenue).

The unexpected dovetailing of social, psychological, philosophical, and career issues may feel surprising, but that's one of the strengths and wide-ranging approaches Landa takes in her program, which is all about reconstructing and envisioning one's life purpose, as well as one's career.

That's why A Career is a Promise is very highly recommended not just for leaders and entrepreneurs who would employ its guidelines for success, but for creative individuals interested in the psychology and challenge of identifying underlying values that reinforce greater goals in life.

Libraries would do well to recommend A Career is a Promise to self-help and book club readers who can equally use it for personal enlightenment and advancement and group discussion.—Diane C. Donovan, Midwest Book Review