Spoiler Warning: Today’s post has spoilers for Amazon Prime’s Reacher S2. If you haven’t seen this most recent season of Reacher and plan on watching, please save today’s post for later. If action shows aren’t for you but insights for GTM leadership are, keep reading.

For a human brick, Jack Reacher sure knows how to lead a cross-functional team.

Season two of Amazon’s hit show Reacher was again full of explosions, flying bullets, and car chases like any good action show. Look, is it the greatest show ever made? Definitely not. Is it an enjoyable binge-watch? Absolutely. This is peak mid-television, people! Not everything needs to win an Emmy!

Anyway, this season especially, was surprisingly full of leadership lessons perfect for any aspiring GTM leader.

Before we dig in, a bit of background if you don’t watch the show (and don’t care about spoilers):

Reacher is an ex-US Army Police Major known for his dry sense of humor, tendency to punch people in the face so hard their noses break, and strong moral compass. When the events of the TV series pick up, he’s a vagrant—no items to his name except for the clothes on his back—hopping from city to city on Greyhound buses. Season one focused on him helping to unravel a drug ring in fictional Margrave, Georgia alongside local police detectives. Season two shows a different side of Reacher—one as a leader of a team called the Special Investigators with a catchy motto:

The motto is born out of the aftermath of a bar fight where the Special Investigators smack down “Army bullies” despite being outnumbered 12 to 9. The scene itself is worth watching:

This fight is the nexus moment for the Special Investigators. It’s when a group of diverse misfits come together and become a high-performing team. How’d they do it?

Today, we’ll dig into five lessons—inspired by the Special Investigators—we can take with us about leading high-performing GTM teams.

1. Understand your team so well your communication is flawless

I watched season two of Reacher alongside season three of Slow Horses, and let me tell you there is quite a difference between a team that communicates well and a team that doesn’t. I’ll write about Slow Horses at some point, but Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) “leads” a group of washed-up MI5 agents who are especially good at not doing what they are told and superb at finding a way to screw everything up.

Reacher’s Special Investigators are the exact opposite. Communication is flawless. Everyone knows the team’s objective and their role. A colleague of mine framed it well at a recent team meeting. He said, “For an employee to be successful, they need to have a clear understanding of their role, goal, and expectations.”

The best teams predict the moves of their teammates. Sentences are swapped for eye glances. Phone calls are efficient, kept to a few seconds or less.

Karla Dixon, a member of the Special Investigators, demonstrates this concept in the following scene where she’s dangling from the edge of a helicopter while strapped to a stretcher.

While totally absurd (read: silly and fun mid-TV), there’s absolutely no spoken communication between Dixon and Reacher. They both are just naturally on the same page. The result is a victory. Karla lives. Bad guys die. Mission success.

Takeaway: Build rapport with your team to better predict how you can collectively solve challenges as they arise.

2. Hold yourself to a higher standard than is required of you

In watching the entire series, the audience grows to respect Reacher for his steadfast dedication to his moral compass. The law sometimes gets it right. Reacher, however, always does.

One scene in season two is especially poignant. Reacher and O’Donnell (another member of the Special Investigators) are chatting with the team at Homeland Security about how to find The Bad Guy. Here’s the exchange:

The Bad Guy caused the death of other members of the Special Investigators. Reacher doesn’t feel like prosecuting him is fair enough justice. Here’s an attempt at a segue: GTM teams are killers, too. To be successful in landing new customers, you need to go above and beyond and kill your competition—holding yourselves to a higher standard in the name of the customer. (I tried… okay!)

Takeaway: “Done” doesn’t necessarily mean “won.” Understand what going above and beyond looks like to drive high performance.

3. Create a team with diverse skillsets

The still-living Special Investigators have a diverse range of skills:

• Reacher — brawn and leadership

• Frances Neagley — detective sleuthing

• Karla Dixon — forensic accounting

• David O’Donnell — brass knuckles, switchblades, and comedic relief

Together, they are a formidable bunch that prevents a scary weapon from landing in the hands of The Bad Guy. They each have their own breakthroughs throughout the season, and each one helps the team get closer to saving the day.

Takeaway: We already know diverse teams win, but they thrive when team chemistry is strong.

4. Obey the chain of command

Unproductive teams cut each other off mid-sentence. They second-guess their leaders. They ooze disrespect.

Not the Special Investigators. When Reacher gives an order, that’s the end of the conversation. Good teams have clear and identified roles. When everyone is trying to be the person who makes decisions, no decisions end up getting made.

There is a time for discussion. Then there is a time for action. At one point this season, the Special Investigators plan to break into Bad Guy Headquarters to search for clues. Before starting the operation, Reacher gives a clear directive: everyone meet at the getaway car in 2 minutes and do not wait for him.

Reacher showed up seven seconds too late and almost had to walk home because his team was ready to follow orders and leave him behind.

Takeaway: Have a clear chain of command that starts with a leader whose decisions you respect.

5. Get out of your comfort zone in the name of the team

When a team is operating at peak productivity and efficiency, it means that you sometimes have to get outside your comfort zone to support the rest of the group. For the Special Investigators, doing things you don’t want to do is just called being a part of the team:

• Reacher—known for his jeans and T-shirt style—dons a fitted blue suit to participate in a reconnaissance mission.

• Neagley has a fear of being touched, yet is often put in situations where she has to use hand-to-hand combat to protect herself and the team.

• O’Donnell rejects the rest of the team’s pleas to sit out of the investigation despite having a family and kids to care for at home.

Takeaway: For teams to achieve great things, it requires everyone to lean in and pull the slack—even if that means doing tasks they wouldn’t choose to do.

Playlist addition

The Reacher soundtrack has a ton of music I don’t normally listen to, but I especially loved this gem: You’ve Got Me Running in Circles by Sonny Cleveland.

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