Why I side hustled as a manager

I had already been working my part time night job for four years and, in that time, I had already built out a good chunk of my MTA Portfolio’s curriculum.

My self-declared master’s degree and its developing final projects was very much the focus and priority in my life.

The part time job I worked to cover the cost of my rent and bills was exactly that – it was a side hustle I did to support the building my master’s degree.

The job did also come with one additional major perk – I could listen to my podcasts and audiobooks while performing the duties of the job and educate myself further.

However, beyond that and the money it brought in, the job in and off itself had very little value to me.

To put the job into context – It was a night shift job recovering and replenishing the big Primark clothing store in the Bristol City Centre.

Granted, I only had to work the weekend shift, but it was still a gruelling, miserable, thankless and underpaid job that was a part of a small minded, largely incompetent and shamefully greedy company.

Therefore, when the opportunity to become the main manager of the weekend night shift came along and I was encouraged to apply for it, I very flatly voiced my complete lack of interest.

Absolutely not.

A job like that was best kept at arm’s length and I would have had my arm twisted behind my back by the company’s impossible demands if I had become the manager.

Therefore, another colleague from the weekday night shift ended up becoming the main manager for the weekend night shift and I was completely happy about that.

Until four months later, when the assistant manager position of the weekend night shift became available.

Again, I was encouraged to apply for this position.

Again, I very flatty voiced my complete lack of interest.

However, I did start to warm to the idea after reflecting on three crucial points…

1. Only one other person had applied for the position and had that person ended up becoming the assistant manager (which was incredibly likely considering they were the only person who had applied for it), it would have made the weekend shift a complete nightmare!
2. Sophia, who had become the main weekend manager four months previously, was someone I got on with very well. At numerous points throughout the first four months of her managership, she had asked for my advice and input on how to manage the weekend night shift. Sophia was also one of the individuals who strongly urged me to apply for the assistant manager position to prevent the other person who had applied for it from getting the position.
3. As much as I hated to admit it or even indulge in the fantasy of becoming one of the managers within that dreaded company, I saw the management position as a prime job placement opportunity (that I had not seen four months previously) to exercise and refine all the management and leadership skills I had been studying as part of my MTA Portfolio.

Therefore, I applied for the position, gave a very impassioned one hour interview and ended up becoming the new weekend nightshift assistant manager!

It was very opportune timing, because right when I became the new manager is also when I started my life coaching practice and business.

It all happened within a matter of weeks.

There had not even been much of a build up to it.

I was just suddenly working as a life coach Monday to Friday and side hustling as manager every Saturday and Sunday night.

Then something very unexpected happened, I discovered that my development in one role enhanced my growth in the other role.

What I learned side hustling as a manager while also being a life coach

Being a life coach working from 9-5 in the week and a night shift manager on the weekend seem like strange bed fellows.

But the funny thing was, I found they balanced each other out very nicely.

Don’t get me wrong, I was completely exhausted.

I also mostly didn’t coach on Mondays (unless it was in the afternoon and evening) to allow me to get some sleep after working my Sunday night shift.

However, after a week of being psychologically drained from all the needy people I was coaching, it was a huge relief to go into my night job and just have people do what I facilitated them to do.

Being a replenishment role for a store spread across four floors, my night job was very physically exhausting and, by the time I had got to Monday morning again, I was more than ready to get back to sitting down and coaching people.

I kept up this routine for five months until I started to burn out and realised that I needed to scale things back a bit (as well as focus a bit more of my time back on my studies).

However, I continued to coach two or three people a week and work my weekend night job while also adding on a bit of overtime here and there.

Overall, I was a life coach across four years (although I lost one year to COVID) and I continued to be a night shift manager for five years.

Throughout that time, I experienced four key developments that evolved how I operated as both a coach and a manager…

 

Managing like a monk

When I first started out, the stress of the job caused me to be a very hot-headed manager and I would often lose my temper with the workers when I perceived them as underperforming.

There is no quicker way to lose the loyalty and co-operation of your staff than to lose your temper with them.

Ultimately, I realised that losing my temper was not helping the situation.

Therefore, I utilised the approach of patience and active listening from the coaching side of things in my managerial practice.

I found that when I operated more as a manager coach and worked with the staff, listened to them, got to know them and allowed them their autonomy, the cooperation and positivity in the workplace went through the roof.

 

Bringing the boundaries to bear (and weakening them too)

I swapped my approach to boundaries for each job.

The boundaries in my manager’s job were very strong and the ones in my coaching practice were sometimes too weak.

Coaching with weak boundaries often left me too exposed to the insecurities of my clients so I took a cue from my manager’s job and gradually strengthened the boundaries in my coaching practice.

On the other hand, I actually found when I softened my boundaries as a manager, I became more approachable to the staff and it made it easier for me to build consistent rapport with them.

 

Managing up as well as down (and in all other directions besides)

The main reason why I would lose my temper with the staff in the early days of being a manager is because there was a lot of pressure and expectations coming down from the management above me.

There was supposed to be a team of twenty-six people on that weekend night shift, and the team only ever averaged about ten people.

In short, the stock numbers that would come in to be put out on the shop floor would rarely be a fair amount for the number of staff we had on shift.

The main source of pressure came from the main weekend night shift manager, Sophia, who in turn was under a great deal of pressure from the store manager.

Ultimately, we were both suffering and we were both losing our tempers with the staff, with ourselves and with each other.

Eventually, I put my foot down and reminded Sophia that being a manager wasn’t always about managing the employees underneath you, sometimes you needed to manage the people above you too (which is precisely what I was doing when I confronted her about this fact).

I pointed out that the store manager was expecting too much of the small weekend night shift team, he needed to re-assess his expectation levels and Sophia, being the manager who always dealt with him, needed to confront him about this.

Again, this multidirectional perspective of managing was brought over from my coaching practice wherein you’re always empowering the client to manage all aspects of their lives and especially if that means confronting obstacles they perceive as insurmountable and above them.

Ultimately, Sophia did have that discussion with the store manager and the expectations on the weekend night team were soon brought down to a more realistic level.

 

Coaching to a certainty

When you’re coaching someone, it is not your job to manage them, your job is to empower them to manage themselves.

However, this rarely happens straight after the first coaching session.

If you rely on the client to be able to manage themselves and the tasks that are set within each coaching session from the get-go, then you are often left feeling very frustrated and disappointed.

Developing people’s ability to self-manage themselves takes a bit of time and when I finally accepted this fact, I accepted that I was going to need to be a bit of a manager in the early days of their coaching experience.

What this amounted to was helping them to draw out a plan of action of achievable steps for attaining their specific goal and then holding them to it with accountable deadlines, which is exactly what I was also doing with the staff in my manager’s job.

Bringing my time as a manager to an end

While writing up this page, I found some old footage that I shot in 2022 while I was working my weekend night job.

In the brief bit of footage, I discussed the job, why I did it and how I would soon be leaving because I had decided to take redundancy.

This footage was shot as part of another video project…

Yes, it was a very happy redundancy and I finally left the dreaded job in September 2022.