Iceland Service Trip

#9 Kouzes & Posner suggest "exemplary leaders should treat every job as an adventure." What have you learned about how to do this on this trip?

At the Blue Church, I really had to take this suggestion to heart to feel like my work had any real meaning at all. The church, while small, is beautiful, and when looking at it, there seems to be very little work that needs to be done, if any at all. The only thing that I could see was maybe some gardening that could be done and the rainbow road that could be repainted. I couldn’t imagine needing to stay there for the full two days as the itinerary had scheduled. I was with the group that was in charge of cleaning the inside of the church. At first, I felt very productive and knew that I was helping, even if it was just vacuuming the pews or washing the windows. Unfortunately, the team met our first real language barrier on the trip. We would sometimes be asked to do jobs that had already been done several times before. This brought the entire group down a little as much of it seemed like it was busy work and the church officials weren’t really sure what to do with us. Additionally, there seemed to be some communication issues in the church itself that contributed to the lack of work we had and what jobs we were allowed to do. Because of these issues, I really had to take Kouzes and Pousner’s idea about exemplary leaders seriously or I would get frustrated. Even though I couldn’t compare the adventure of our church service to that of the petting zoo, I knew that both were greatly needed and that the people we worked for really appreciated our efforts.Read more