Missing person is a task in which a team creates an imaginary person who will help them overcome their limitations and bring about improved team performance. The new character represents the skills roles and qualities that the team has so far lacked or needing greater measure. This new person can also have characteristics that are already well represented in the group. So what to draw the group make a picture of an imaginary team member whose presence would help the group work together and achieve a higher level of performance. Start with a briefing in which you ask everyone to think about what kind of new team member would have to improve in performance? What qualities would help to make the person accepted as a team member?

What extra strengths and skills would you like the new person to bring and of course encourage the team to start with a name that can be changed later. Get drawing early on in the process and only use words if the desired qualities cannot be illustrated. Then ask each group to introduce the person they have created, while explaining how this person will help to improve teamwork and team performance. This works well after a few team activities or after the group has worked on a variety of tasks. If you do it indoors, use flip papers and pens. Outdoors.

The group can scavenge for natural or artificial resources from which to make their own missing person just creating environmental art. In the outdoor version it is easier for more people to be involved and artists block does not deter people from gathering and arranging materials. It usually takes 10 to 50 minutes creating the person, maybe a bit more for the outdoor version. In order to encourage full participation, you should divide large teams into smaller groups of four to seven people provide plenty of pens and place the paper on table surfaces. flip charts are a pain to draw on. Take care not to destroy artworks, the creators should dispose of their own work.

And even if the images are soon forgotten, it is still a valuable review exercise because the task involves the group considering its strengths, needs, skills and qualities. If the imaginary person lives on after the event, it may assist with learning transfer. On the other hand, the better this exercise has worked, the more likely it is that the team will have learned the lessons and have already moved on. The power of the creative image can be stronger than any action plan, but in some situations, an action plan will add value. So as a variation of the method as the team who will take responsibility for each of the desired changes, and for ensuring that they happen. missing person is fruitful in getting a team assessing their own values, skills and needs, or creating their own mascot for inspiring them to work better as a team.

I personally use the variation to identify the participants needs in the first day of a leadership training. They created a person that had the qualities they lacked, and also the qualities they wanted to promote and maintain in the group. From that we've identified together some leadership attributes that were considered lacking. And then I've developed some games for the next few days that helps express the missing leadership attributes. Roger says I once worked on a program where There really was a missing person. person number 10 never turned up for the program.

But the rest of the group started to become imaginative and to almost fantasize about who this other person might have been. During the course of the program, every so often they would refer to this person if they needed help, if they wanted to blame someone, if they wanted to have a bit of fun. And the missing person became so much a part of the group that it was as if the person really was fair. It had such a powerful impact on this group that I thought how can I use this more deliberately in groups in future, and what Bogdanovich just described is precisely that process. The missing person