Service is... Grappling with Ideas - Day 1 & 2 - 6.18.10 & 6.19.10

On our journey this year we are asked to define our philosophy of service. This will be an especially hard quest for me because I'm not sure how to define service. In fact, as we started this venture 2 years ago, when we did our KWL (what we know, what we want to know, and what we learned), I had several things in the W column and not much anywhere else. Some of the questions I was seeking to get answers to:

• We know that there are styles of and types of leadership and different ways people learn, are there different "types" of service?
• Can service still be taking place, even if you are receiving monetary gains? 
• So often service is related to giving back to the community...isn't service also giving to your family and to those close to you when in need?
• Are some people more predisposed to serve? Is it a disposition?

When I came in to this program, I had a pretty good understanding of leadership (or so I thought), I knew some about learning, but service is a large area of question for me. 

Blair and Hipp (2010) talked about service as a personal journey, about understanding others and being open to serve their needs (rather than our own?). However, most times what we end up serving is already in alignment with our own value system. This helps us to meet our own needs at the same time. 

So I continually try to ascertain - 

Is service a project, serving on a board, providing community service, service to our children's school, it is a physical act?

OR

Is service really helping others in need in small ways? Can it be all the little things you do to help others achieve their goals?

Here is another example, at my children's school last year, they implemented mandatory service hours from the parents. This really struck me the wrong way, because if it is mandatory, how can it be service? In my mind, the way to encourage parents to be more active and find ways they can give back to the school community doesn't happen by mandating a certain number of hours that somebody "work" for the school. However, service is defined in so many different ways, that is really is hard to put a definition to it. 

Looking in a couple of different online dictionaries, they had 15-23 different definitions of the word service. That really made me think hard about what service is and what we are talking about when we say the word "service".

This year will be a great year to gain new meanings and understandings of service.

Stanford-Blair, N. & Hipp, K. (2010, June). The Service Year. Lecture delivered at Summer Institute at Cardinal Stritch University, Milwuakee, WI