Red Teaming
Explicitly assign team members the role of critics and challengers in a meeting. Making the adversarial role official removes personal friction and ensures ideas are stress-tested.
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Related Exercises
Arguments
Three players: one in center, two on sides taking opposite positions. The center player must maintain logical and emotional agreement with both simultaneously.
The Lawyer
Participants take on the role of defending or advocating for unexpected positions, developing persuasive communication and perspective-taking skills.
Silo-Busting Exercise
Assemble a team facing a real challenge, then add people from a completely separate department who have no experience with it. The outsiders bring fresh perspective and break entrenched patterns.
Support
Activities focused on demonstrating and receiving support within a team, emphasizing that all members succeed or fail together.
Conch Shell
Conch Shell is an applied improvisation exercise in which a physical object serves as a speaking token: only the person holding the object may speak. The mechanic enforces one-voice-at-a-time give-and-take in group conversations, making unequal participation patterns visible and creating structured space for voices that are typically crowded out by more dominant speakers.
Conflict Scenes
Conflict Scenes is an exercise in which performers practice scenes driven by opposing wants or viewpoints. The exercise explores how conflict creates narrative engine and emotional intensity without requiring hostility. It teaches players to sustain productive disagreement while maintaining the scene's collaborative foundation.
How to Reference This Page
The Improv Archive. (2026). Red Teaming. Retrieved March 17, 2026, from https://improvarchive.org/exercises/red-teaming
The Improv Archive. "Red Teaming." The Improv Archive, 2026. https://improvarchive.org/exercises/red-teaming.
The Improv Archive. "Red Teaming." The Improv Archive, 2026, https://improvarchive.org/exercises/red-teaming. Accessed March 17, 2026.
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