Give me a chance and I will take on the world

An early insurance career was brokered for Martin McGibbon by having the right support at the right time. He tells how things can work out, even after bad experiences at school.

I have been fortunate to find a career that embraces all levels of communication. I have had no speech therapy - maybe my parents should have taken it more seriously. I have no direct avoidance tactics any more. I am 47 and a successful businessman - I am who I am.

It was a colleague of my father who gave me a break from failure and a chance to establish myself. I struggled through a few O' Levels and left school four months into A' Levels, I was 17 and old enough to stand up to a teacher who said the very words "if you can't talk properly, don't talk at all". These were the last words I heard in the education system, I left school at 2.10pm on 6th January 1971.

A few jobs followed. I joined an estate agent as a junior, in the hope that I could make the leap to professional, but the way was barred as the partners thought I was not best placed in front of clients. I left there, demoralized and somewhat fed up and did a few office and shop jobs. My late father was in a senior position with a large insurance company and had many brokers as his friends. I went to see Peter Bennett, then a 54 year old managing director of one of Leicester's leading insurance brokers. He was, and still is one of the most charming men I have every met. Peter still works and is now employed by my company at the age of 85, he still sees his clients. Peter gave me a chance and I joined his company in 1973 as an insurance clerk. I was still dogged by the stammer, but at 19 I was coming to terms with it - it wasn't going to go away.

After a couple of years I was allowed to see clients, firstly with a director, and then sometimes on my own. The fact that I could sit in front of a managing or financial director and speak authoritatively about insurance risks did a lot for my self confidence, again, another major step in my life. I then found that this role was taking up more and more of my time and I was being complimented by clients to the directors for being so precise. In reality, I was taking it slowly, in an effort to be fluent. I still had odd moments of absolute silence no matter the amount of effort, but tried to disguise this and cough and think up another way of saying what I had instinctively wanted to say. Another lesson learned, and I became a walking thesaurus, and still am.

I still have off days, goodness only knows why, where I find speech difficult, but in the main I can think fast enough to spot a difficult word and change it. I still cannot read verbatim aloud something written by someone else, or sometimes even written by me that was never intended to be spoken by me. So I have become known in business as someone who can think on his feet and is good in a difficult position. The strange thing is that every few years the words I get stuck on will change. It used to be anything beginning with SC, now my worst sound is CL, but another technique I used and sometimes still do is to put a silent fluent letter in front of the word, so in my brain it becomes a different sound. I learned this after seeing an interview on television with the late Michael Bentine who had a bad stammer as a boy at boarding school, and I think I had it bad! He said that he could only say words beginning with 'N' fluently, so the lady in the local chip shop thought he was foreign when he asked for "nportion nof nchips nwith nsalt nand nvinegar", you need to say this to see the funny side, he then developed the silent technique.

I have stammered for as long as I can remember, it really came to my notice when verbal communication became necessary after moving to new schools. I grew up in the North of Scotland, firstly in Elgin, my birthplace and secondly in Inverness until age 10 when my family moved to Leicester where I have lived ever since.

I suppose subconsciously I had used the avoidance technique and had become widely known as a "quiet lad" or someone who wanted to "keep myself to myself". I still remember it as if was yesterday, my first and worst real speech nightmare. I was shown into my new class in the school in Leicester at age 10, knew nobody, and had to stand up in front of the teacher and 30 other kids to tell them my name, my hobbies, interests and about where I had come from in Scotland. This momentous day began a long school life being called either "wobblygob" or "stutterguts" a practice that was enjoyed by fellow pupils and certain teachers. The teacher had not been advised that I stammered, my parents would not accept this and failed to recognise that their son was anything less than perfect. To them my stammer was a phase I was going through, they were both very old fashioned, bless them - my father died in 1977 and my mother in 1994.

This lead to a sheltered and lonely school life with few friends. Fortunately, I was good at most sports and when engaged in a game, saw myself as equal to the other participants. I still play tennis regularly now, and this means a lot to me. The downside at school was a poor attendance record. I would regularly skip school in fear of being picked on, or if I had any inkling that the English lesson was going to involve reading aloud, then I would rather be anywhere else. The teachers then thought that I needed to be pushed in this area so I was volunteered by them to take part in every school play production/assembly reading and the like.

From 13 onwards, I had weekend, evening and holiday jobs. I would work full time in a supermarket all school holidays, my parents thought I was mad, but I earned a lot of money for a boy of my age. Above all, I found this life outside school where people were less concerned about how I spoke, which made me less self concious and: "Eureka", I was an equal to everyone else.

'Confidence is what I've looked for and tried to build with every executive who has ever worked with me. Confidence gives you courage and extends your rearch. it lets you take greater risks and achieve far more than you ever thought possible. Building self-confidence in others is a huge part of leadership. It comes from providing opportunies and challenges for people to do the things they never imagined they could do - rewarding them after each success in every way possible.' Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric Company. (from 'Jack' - the autobiography of Jack Welch, p5. Headline Publishing

Like so many people who stammer, it is different for everyone, coping with it is down to the individual. I have adopted many techniques, not directly aimed at fluency but mind games. Firstly, I am naturally left handed, but write and do everything right handed. I play golf left handed, and in tennis, my backhand is the natural shot for me. I read in a newspaper article by Ray Connolly, that there is a school of thought to suggest that a stammer can be caused by the old habit of making a naturally left handed young child right handed, resulting in the left and right side of the developing brain becoming confused. So, in difficult meetings, public speaking, I make notes with my left hand and hold a pen in my left hand at all times. Secondly, I am an actor, standing in front of a lot of people but it is not me speaking - I am playing the part of an insurance broker who does not have a stammer. Don't worry, most of the time I am just me.

I left Peter's company in 1984 and joined my present company, where I was appointed a director in 1989, and an executive director in 1993. I qualified in 1987 as an ACII (Associate of the Insurance Institute) and a CIB (Chartered Insurance Brokers) and I am a member of the Society of Fellows.

I have never really talked to anyone about my stammer, it has always been my problem, I think I cope with it very well and others say I do, in particular my wife who I have been married to for 22 years.

I look forward to the next day as much as anyone else, although, it is hard work sometimes.

Martin McGibbon is a Director of Berkeley Burke (UK) Ltd

From the Summer 2002 edition of Speaking Out