Early signs of deafness
The first signs of possibly hereditary deafness were detected when Tim was three or four; but he was familiar with the sound of words and his own voice before he started to lose his hearing, and it was not until he was 14 that he first had to wear a hearing aid in his left ear. Consequently he has always thought of himself as a hearing person with a problem of deafness rather than a deaf person. Nor did his parents regard him as disadvantaged because he was hard of hearing. On the contrary, they gave him practical help when he needed it but encouraged him to get on with his life without letting his deafness worry him.
When he graduated from university with a law degree at the age of 21, his parents paid for him to be fitted with two privately provided hearing aids. These enabled him to hear reasonably well, although he had some difficulty deciphering speech on the telephone and against background noise.
Working as a trainee solicitor
Tim first joined a local firm as a trainee solicitor; but from the outset he found it difficult to use the telephone or deal with clients in a noisy open plan office in a noisy part of the town. After six months he decided that with his deafness he could never succeed in private practice and resigned.
He started looking for a traineeship in the legal department of a local authority or some other public authority where, as he put it, "they have a much more sensible attitude to deafness". After a few months' search he secured appointment, at the age of 23, as a trainee solicitor to the regional water authority. His new employer installed a hands-free speakerphone for him; but he still found it difficult to understand speech on the telephone. However, at this stage his hearing was sufficient for him to take part almost normally in one-to-one or group discussions in reasonably quiet surroundings.
Doing court work
Three years later he qualified as a solicitor and began to take prosecutions for non-payment on behalf of the company. Cross-examining witnesses in open court posed particular problems. Tim had to make sense of what witnesses were saying and formulate his next question at the same moment. He taught himself to lipread fairly effectively; but it was still very difficult to follow what witnesses were saying in noisy surroundings, and sometimes he made obvious mistakes.
Working at Head Office
After four years' court work, at the age of 30, Tim was transferred to the company's Head Office to work on negotiations that required discussions on the telephone and at meetings; he found both increasingly stressful as his hearing gradually worsened. Five years later the decision was taken to privatise the water authority, and Tim was seconded to the unit responsible for establishing the new company.
Initially he had great difficulty in following the discussions at the large management meetings that preceded the privatisation; but this difficulty was resolved with the support of a small radio microphone linked to the back of his two hearing aids, which was moved from speaker to speaker.
The threat to promotion from profound deafness
When the new company was established, Tim was appointed a Principal Solicitor and for the next two years did much of the work of the most senior lawyer in the firm, the Company Solicitor, while he prepared for retirement. However, this was also the period when Tim's deafness suddenly worsened. Although he could still hear some speech with his hearing aids, he could no longer use the telephone at all on his own or gain any benefit from the loop systems or microphones which had previously helped him at meetings. He had now become profoundly deaf.
This development posed a serious threat to his prospects of further promotion. Although he was deputising for the Company Solicitor very effectively and in many ways seemed his most obvious successor, the firm's board of directors had doubts about whether he could cope with the top legal job because of his accelerating deafness.
Tim's appointment as Company Solicitor
Tim recognised the threat and made it clear to the firm's managing director that since he was already carrying out many of the Company Solicitor's functions, he would be very resentful if he was not appointed to the job. In the event he was appointed Company Solicitor at the age of 37 and worked in the job for 10 years. During this period he provided the company with a full range of legal services and managed a small department of 10 people.
His methods of management and communication
Tim developed his own strategy to enable him to stay on top of the job as a profoundly deaf manager.
First, he delegated to other members of his staff all the tasks that were not directly his own responsibility. He therefore relied heavily on their support; this could cause friction when he needed their help to implement decisions he had taken that conflicted with their own views. Yet he found them almost unfailingly supportive.
In his own work Tim tried to achieve what he wanted through correspondence or by telephone without the need for a meeting wherever possible. He found that many internal issues could be resolved quickly by e-mail messages sent through the firm's computer system; but, with his secretary's help, Tim could also use the telephone effectively. Before starting a call he prepared carefully the points he wanted to make so that he could keep control of the subjects for discussion. He prepared in this way for several telephone calls and then asked his secretary to join him.
Each call was made hands-free on his speakerphone, and his secretary mimed to him what his caller was saying in response to the points that he had made. Consequently he could usually continue the conversation immediately, even though he himself might not have heard what the caller had said. The success of this approach depended on the fact that his secretary was easy to lipread. When she was away, he found it hard to use the same approach with other secretaries.
As a result of these measures Tim did not have to call many meetings. He was not afraid of meetings, however. He accepted that sometimes they are the most straightforward way of resolving outstanding issues. He therefore took a number of steps to get the most out of meetings despite his deafness:
- while he was still a Principal Solicitor he persuaded the firm's directors to hire a Palantype machine to enable his secretary to transmit the words being spoken at the meeting on to a screen for him to read. However, the use of the Palantype was eventually abandoned because his secretary was too busy to learn how to operate the system effectively, and the company's internal training facilities were inadequate to provide her with the training that she needed;
- he then arranged for another member of staff to sit beside him and write notes of what was being said so that he could keep pace with the issues emerging from the discussion;
- at meetings with people he knew well he repeated key statements that they had made to check that he had understood them correctly; and
- after each meeting he always arranged for a member of his team who had been present to give him feedback on the main issues dealt with to help him clarify any points that he could not follow during the discussion.
Tim also developed his own distinctive approach to keeping up to date with new developments in his specialist field of environmental law. Even as a university student, he preferred to teach himself the law by reading several books on the same subject to relying on his understanding of the spoken word at lectures or seminars. As Company Solicitor he found that by reserving time to read commentaries on decided cases and new legislation he could brief himself more thoroughly than colleagues who relied on what they could pick up from short training courses. Nevertheless, occasionally he also borrowed handouts circulated at training courses attended by colleagues.
It was more difficult for him to keep up to date with management issues. He was reluctant to attend management conferences for senior managers because of the way in which they were organised. He found it impossible to benefit from the workshops and question and answer sessions involved.
Finally, Tim's success at work relied heavily on being able to relax completely at home. He depended on the understanding and support of his partner to help him cope with the pressures of his job. When he came home from work in the evening, he often took off his hearing aids for a while to avoid listening or talking to anyone. In addition, his partner has accepted that he is not very sociable. Because of his aversion to background noise he is not the sort of person who wants to join friends in a pub or attend social events designed for a large number of people. On the other hand he has always been a keen musician; his hearing is just good enough for him to enjoy playing both the piano and the classical organ.
The company's attitude to his deafness
Tim considers that in the early stages of his career his line managers accepted him provided that he continued to perform effectively and coped with the problems caused by his deafness without looking to them for help. They made little effort to understand the effects of his deafness or make his job easier. He felt that this was still the attitude of the board of directors after he had been appointed Company Solicitor. A new line manager, the Group Company Secretary, seemed more understanding but had no influence on the attitude of the board as a whole.
Early retirement on grounds of ill health
Tim's period as Company Solicitor came to an end abruptly at the age of 47 when the parent company of his regional water company was taken over. It soon became clear that the new owners had decided to shed as many staff as possible.
Tim was offered early retirement on grounds of ill health because of his deafness. He saw that the Water Pension Scheme provided excellent financial benfits for those who retire through ill health and therefore accepted the offer. However had he not been offered early retirement Tim would probably have had to accept "voluntary severance" on less generous terms. He believes that he would then have had grounds to make a claim for compensation under the Disability Discrimination Act.
Tim's current employment
Since his early retirement from the regional water company Tim has been working part-time as a consultant solicitor in private practice. He can now do much of his work at home, does not use the telephone and never has to attend large meetings. So his working life is far less stressful than it was in his job as Company Solicitor, and he has expanded his social life, for example by joining a local tennis club and a golf club.
Deciding whether to have a cochlear implant
Given the extent of Tim's deafness it might seem logical for him to have a cochlear implant to improve his hearing. In January 1997 he was persuaded to apply to the Hearing Assessment Centre at Selly Oak Hospital for his suitability for a cochlear implant to be tested. After extensive tests he decided not to apply for a cochlear implant for three reasons:
- his hearing aids still provided a worthwhile level of hearing;
- as Company Solicitor he could not easily afford time off for an operation; and
- if he retained a hearing aid in one ear as suggested, he doubted if he would be able to reconcile the different sounds reaching him from the hearing aid in one ear and the cochlear implant in the other.
Although he has now retired and could afford the time to have a cochlear implant he feels that his level of hearing is still reasonably good with the support of both his hearing aids; so he will not consider having an implant unless he loses his hearing altogether.
Nevertheless, he has remained in contact with the Hearing Assessment Centre for the level of hearing provided by his hearing aids to be monitored in case he does lose the rest of his hearing.