The Coaching and Learning Curve of Archie Bunker

I’ve always been somebody who has been fascinated by people who seemed to have it all.  People who had their stuff together.  They had complete control of their surroundings.  They had control of people, events, physical and spiritual wellness and career and finances.  They dealt with adversity no matter how difficult it would have been for everybody else.  They made no mistakes.  There were no lessons life could teach them.

These were people I saw from the outside – people in the big homes driving the nice cars with the perfect kids.  I justified my naive hypothesis simply by watching television but it took me at least 8 years to debunk this illusion of the perfect person.  I have Archie Bunker to thank for that.

I came from a middle class family and was a child of the 70’s decade.  The cool thing about being a child of that generation was that as much as I saw the perfect life of the “Brady Bunch” I saw the imperfect life of the Bunker’s on “All in the Family”.  I got to admit I wasn’t a fan of Archie Bunker at first.  He was bitter, mean and of course a bigoted man.  He was a wrench thrown into the perfect family machine I had grown to love in the world according to the Brady Bunch and Partridge Family and the perfect people who lived in my town.

Now I didn’t dwell on this at the time.  It was something that slowly occurred to me probably because I wasn’t gripped by the thought that not every father was a successful architect.  I had a very supportive and loving family, great friends and an active school life.  But there was one of those “aha” moments that occurred watching the first episode of “Archie Bunker’s Place” – the continuation of “All in the Family”.  Something monumental had happened to Archie Bunker. 

I had watched Archie grow as a person through all 9 seasons.  “All in the Family” was a show I didn’t understand at first because I was probably 7 or 8 years old when I would plant myself in front of the TV while mom and dad waited for it to come on.  But what I discovered was that Archie was surrounded by people that cared for him no matter how grumpy or nasty or mean he would be.  Norman Lear the writer of the series needed to wrap up his 23 minute sitcom episode every week so there had to always be some kind of unrealistic resolution. But there was something else happening too.

Every episode was a true learning experience for Archie Bunker – and they were all based on what every man could understand.  There was no pre-teen fluffy moral summarized at the end of the day about Marsha Brady overcoming her fear of going to the dance with a broken nose.  This was real stuff.  Things maybe I had seen my own dad struggle with but never gave it a second thought until then.  Archie Bunker was learning from his mistakes yet was always supported by the people who meant the most to him despite the way he sometimes mistreated them.

By the end of the season Archie had become a different man.  This next statement could be argued by some but he did become more tolerant of people – his racist comments became less pronounced.  He became a grandfather.  He became a business owner.  We started to see him in a different way.  And that “aha!” moment came to me when I watched the episode where he’s sitting in his bedroom alone.  His wife Edith had suffered a stroke in her sleep and died.   Archie breaks down and weeps.  This major life event cements his spot in life as someone who will always be a good person – he will never turn back to his old ways no matter how awful his circumstances might become. 

I started to open my eyes to my real surroundings.  I saw those perfect families going through hard times.  Bankruptcies, abuse, divorce, and those perfect kids strung out on drugs and in trouble with the law.  Some of those families recovered; some did not.  They were on the other end of the economic and social ladder than the Archie Bunker types but the one constant between them was this:  Some evolved and some didn’t. 

I would theorize that most of us with constant, consistent reinforcement HAVE to change despite the few of us who just do not choose to or simply cannot change for whatever reason.  And there may not be a major life event that triggers a permanent positive change.  I slowly began figuring out how I could set up an atmosphere for facilitating these changes starting with myself and then for others.  It’s not rocket science.  It just takes commitment and consistency like anything else worth attaining.  And eventually it becomes second nature, like walking, laughing and breathing. 

This blog will concentrate on the business aspect of relevant coaching and feedback.  I hope that by adopting these changes in your management style that it will help you in your personal and other professional relationships too.  Unlike the 9 years it took Archie Bunker your results as a manager in employee satisfaction and improved metrics that will be almost immediate and will last.