HSYP807 Innovation In Leadership, Teamwork And Advocacy Assessment Task 4 Answer

Answer :

Innovation in Leadership, Teamwork & Advocacy

Assessment Task 4 

Part A: 1. Explain the difference between leadership and management: 

Leadership is referred to as a skill to lead others by examples, while management is about the art of systematic management of others. As opined by Kotterman (2006), leadership is all about trust. A leader can become successful if the subordinates are having trust and faith in the leader. However, management is about control. Even though trust is also needed in management, but either by force or through trust, the key role of management is to control others and let the work done in one way or another. However, leadership is entirely opposite as leadership is concerned with influencing and inspiring people. Algahtani (2014) is of the view that while leadership always focus on bringing changes to improve organisational performance and achieve the organisational objectives, the management function is to stabilise the change by its proper implementation. In this context, it can be said that even with numerous differences, both leadership and management are entirely interlinked with each other. 

2. Explain why public health advocacy is important: 

Public health advocacy is about educating, organising and developing system change for population health. The main importance of public health advocacy is that it helps in developing legislations focusing on the current and future health threats towards the community for developing optimal health. Farrer et al. (2015) are of the view that public health advocacy is required to ensure the development of healthful environments, proper access to care and elimination of economic, social and health inequalities present in the community. Devakumar, Spencer & Waterston (2016) pointed out that public health advocacy has become more important in the modern days when what people eat, drink and smoke affects their health. It is important to identify the underlying reasons including statistical data, stories of different disadvantaged communities for proper public health advocacy as it is the public health advocacy that can help to bring changes in public health. One example as identified in Bassett (2003) is that of 1848 Cholera Epidemic in London where the contaminated water resource was identified after observation of the cholera epidemic in the city of London. The identification was due to proper observation which is made through data observed. This shows that public health advocacy is important to bring changes in the way people live and work and develop the proper environment of health through either legislations or advice, education for disadvantaged communities and organising educational programmes.   

3. Explain the difference between lobbying and advocacy: 

While advocacy is about arguing in favour of an idea or cause that tends to affect the society like telling the behaviours that employers should have or laws that governments should implement. Advocacy is having no limit and can range from environmental topics to political debates. As far as lobbying is concerned, it is about influencing directly or indirectly legislation or any issue. Through lobbying, individuals or non-profit organisations try to directly influence the concerned official or political leaders to change the laws or legislation (Hanegraaff et al. 2015). 

4. Explain three reasons why the evaluation of an advocacy strategy is important: 

i. Performance management: Through advocacy evaluates, it becomes easier for non-profit organisations to let the donors understand the complexity of policy change and thereby can help them understand the possibilities of accomplishment within a limited timeframe. This helps in improving the performance of the advocacy strategy.  

ii. Learning: Advocacy strategy evaluation is equally important for learning.  Political scenario's change very quickly and therefore evaluating an advocacy strategy allows us to respond quickly and change the course of action swiftly.  

iii. Accountability:  Through evaluation and continuous monitoring, it becomes possible to develop a shared understanding between the team members. It helps in creating accountability on how the strategy will be measured and documented based on which the team members need to do their bit for the success of the strategy (Gardner & Brindis, 2017). 

Part B: 

5 What initial steps might you undertake to embark on this project? Consider that you are working as part of a team? 

Public health advocacy refers to an initiative taken for the purpose of educating, organising and mobilising public about their health concerns and health issues and benefits everywhere. According to Tabak et al. (2015), improving public health issues with the help of promotions and public health policies is a major step. Based on the scenario, as a part of Public Health Advocate team member working in the McCusker Centre, it would be an influential role and responsibility towards Alcohol ad control in the television during Live Australian Sports events. There can be numerous steps to be emphasised being in such a position:- 

Compliant Generation initiative in Alcohol Advertising Review Board (AARB):

By taking this initiative against alcohol promotion directly in alliance with the AARB, it can provide a better scope of finding a solution. Being a member of the public health advocacy team, it needs to be compliant directly and immediately during the promotion of alcohol, Australian Sports events are live energy drivers of sportsmen spirit (Phrp.com.au, 2017). It would benefit in reducing first of all the amount of promotion from the list. 

Developing Effective Code of Conduct: Focusing strongly on the code of conduct under the guidelines of the Australian Government, they can modify the nature of ads at least that might not affect the mind of the children during the sports show.  

Social media Awareness live: The next initiative would be to spread awareness directly in the social media pages live with the examples of the negative influence of such alcohol ads on TV. This can generate some degree of knowledge to most of the rural places and people having wrong conceptions about alcohol intake marketing practices are not ethical during sports. 

Taking sustainable initiative in association with good leadership theory: There can be a standardised leadership theory like Contingency, which can actively take some key concern of understanding the perception of others in the subordinate role within a team (Apsc.gov.au, 2019). This kind of sustainable approach can progress in engaging all the people into a single unit for community welfare program for raising an alert.

6. Given the diversity within your team, how might this impact team dynamics and work outcomes?

Diversity is a major issue in terms of culture, religion, gender, education, place and background of personal as well as professional life in the past. In other words, cultural diversity often develops differences in thinking and perspective of idea generation and evaluation of choice (Verkuyten & Yogeeswaran, 2019). According to this psychological opinion of the authors, it can be acknowledged that due to the presence of different people of different background and profession, it might impact on the team dynamics and work outcome in a different manner. 

Positive Influence of Diversity on team dynamics and work outcome:

Increase innovation and creativity: If there is a diversity of thoughts, ideas and concepts, it can provide an opportunity to find an inventive and innovative strategy (Tabak et al., 2015). For example, two members of one team would prefer to have sit together to find new approaches and plan of action for settling down one major issue in a community. 

Develops flexibility of teamwork: If the management is cooperative in its’ leadership role and approach, it can provide the flexibility of team members' hours of duties in the service. This can benefit the organisation to find a way in a positive direction.    

Increases the proximity of information-sharing: 

Information-sharing between team members would require a high level of team coordination and faithfulness (Verkuyten & Yogeeswaran, 2019). It can be attained if there are proximity and strong ethical relationship between the members as well. In the case of the McCusker Centre, it can obtain secured and keen observation of the initiatives and its process of execution under the strategic guidelines of the AARB committee.

Improves productivity: 

Productivity can be improved and increased if there is an ethical bond between team members working at the McCusker Centre. Therefore, it can generate productivity in terms of a maximum number of alcohol awareness promoted in the local communities and the Aboriginals.  

Negative Influence of Diversity on Team performance: Other than these, diversity can also negatively influence by creating misconceptions of ideas, initiatives and conflicts of interests (Tabak et al., 2015). If McCusker public health advocates involve in such conflicts, it can have a disaster in terms of making policies and changing the regulations.  

7. Plan of action for taking this issue forward. 

Live sporting events on television attracts more young demographics, and here the problem statement is that these alcohol advertisements are influencing these young people. This following section will identify major key elements that need to be taken into consideration, in order to stop alcohol advertising during live sporting events in Australia.

The vulnerability of young people: Because of their less maturity level, young people, especially teenagers, can easily be influenced. As these advertisements are being shown during the sporting events and while these young demographic is watching these sports events, it is possible that they are being influenced to drink alcohol because of such advertisements. These young people are more vulnerable to alcohol than adults (Park & Schepp, 2015). Alcohol dependency in young age harms the mental and physical growth and can permanently impair brain development as well.

Change of attitude towards drinking: These advertisements depicts alcohol consumption as attractive and rewarding. Which, as a result, changes the mindset or attitude of people towards alcohol intake and such a change of attitude is more prominent among young people. As these sports events are being watched by a wider audience, these advertisements are negatively impacting the progress made by awareness activities performed by government agencies and social welfare organisations. 

Influence on hazardous activities: Alcohol advertisements portray alcohol drinking as refreshments and illustrates a sense of elegance. Which as a result, changes overall conception about drinking as a result and appeals less mature people towards excessive drinking. These people perform hazardous activities such as drunk-driving or misbehaving or assaulting people post their excessive drinking sessions.

Promotion of binge drinking: As these advertisements are being shown over and over again during the telecast of sporting events, people with less maturity level such as the young demographics misinterpret them (Krieger et al., 2018). As they are watching the charming effect of drinking through these advertisements, they are getting influenced by psychologically and driving them towards binge drinking habits. 

8. Outline and briefly explain three individual strategies Provide the reasoning for your choice of strategy. 

Stopping alcohol advertisement during the major sports events will not mitigate the alcoholism-related issues from Australian society. Because these companies are also sponsoring sports events. Therefore it is natural; their brands will come up during the events through player equipment or billboards (Health, 2014). Therefore, phasing out sponsorship deals from sporting events is also a necessary action. The following are strategies to phase out alcohol sponsorships:

• Showing of young people or players in alcohol advertisements needs to stop, as such actions influence young people to drink alcohol.
• Advertisements showing alcohol in the context of an integral part of sports culture is misrepresentation the sports and its culture among young people. Therefore, portraying of such picture through advertisements needs to be stopped. 
• Alcohol brands should not be allowed to show their logos or names anywhere on the ground or on player equipment. Also, they should be allowed to put billboards in the playgrounds as well. Not showing their identity will suppress their brand name; thus, these companies will stop sponsoring on their own.

Rationale:

The above-mentioned strategies are being formed because alcohol brands misrepresent the effects of alcohol intake. This is why showing known figures such as players or celebrities in the alcohol advertisements needs to be stopped as they create a picture of superiority and elegance through alcohol intake among young people. Furthermore, alcohol brands should not be allowed to use their brand names or logos in sporting events. Because even though advertisements during these events are stopped, they will still be visible to young demographics who are watching those events. Based on these understandings, the above-mentioned strategies were suggested.

9. What challenges do you envisage coming up against based on the information in the above scenario? 

According to the case scenario, it can be acknowledged that the increased ratio of advertisement and television promotion of alcohol has been growing faster in rate, especially during the live sports events campaigning in Australia. The challenges are as follows:-

Inability to access trading rights in local Channels:

Trading rights in the local Television channels can be a challenging issue that might appear in future. Based on the scenario analysed above, it can be identified and recognised that if the team members are unable to find legal association with the higher authority at McCusker Centre, it will disable the management to find suitable stakeholders ready to control the promotional rights and access in the television during the sports events (Karriker-Jaffe et al., 2018). It might create violence among the public, if not controlled immediately. 

Difficulties in managing policies of the Alcohol Advertising Review Board

Managing the policies is another challenge while dealing with the agreement between the AARB members under the ethical governance of Australian Government. If the McCusker team members might come in conflict with the AARB members in terms of different perceptions of using the advertisements (Phrp.com.au, 2017). It can create a wide range of relationship issue between these two legal organisations in future. 

Having financial Challenges in paying high tax rates from the end of the advertising agencies to the Government of Australia: 

This is another biggest challenge in terms of gaining financial support in paying tax rates from the end of the advertising agencies in the city. In other words, an initiative taken for minimising the ratio of promotion and paying compensation would impact in forming conflicts of interests within the stakeholders’ relationship (Rules & Regulations about Marketing Alcohol to the public, 2019). This kind of complexities might take a new issue like obstructions from the agencies towards the organisation, McCusker centre.