I connected with Jim Ballard when he contacted me after reading my Q&A with Karen Dietz, with whom he has worked. When he told me he had written several of his books as fables, I felt he’d be a good subject for his own Q&A. He was also kind enough to send me a couple of his published works. And, he responded to my Q&A questions faster than any other subject ever had! Since then, we’ve also begun collaborating on a project. He has just re-launched his blog, mind like water, which is terrifically inspirational. This Q&A will run over the next five days

Bio: Jim Ballard spent 10 years in schools as a teacher, guidance counselor and principal, and another 10 years conducting teacher training seminars in classroom management, team building and affective curriculum. When he met Ken Blanchard in 1973, Jim moved into corporate training. As a consulting partner with Blanchard Companies he designed and facilitated award-winning management courses and coauthored books with Blanchard, including Managing By Values, Everyone’s A Coach, Mission Possible, Customer Mania, and Whale Done! On his own Jim has published What’s the Rush? (Random House), Mind Like Water (Wiley & Sons), and Little Wave and Old Swell, A Parable of Life and Its Passing (Simon & Schuster). With his wife Barbara Perman, he has published No Ordinary Move. The primary writer of Whale Done! and Whale Done Parenting, Jim has compiled his coauthors’ stories and suggestions and worked them into a parable. His writing focuses on positive relationships, change, and empowering people to deal with problems like information overload. Jim is a life coach and enjoys coaching readers through his blog and other writings. Jim lives in Amherst, MA, with his partner Barbara Perman.

Q: How did you initially become involved with story/storytelling/narrative? What attracted you to this field? What do you love about it?

A: When my kids were small, I was a summer camp director a couple of summers, and I would spin yarns to them every night in our tent. (Even now they joke about the series we did about the exploits of a superhero insect named Snyder the Spider, who could spin a steel-strong filament to catch criminals and save falling people and breaking bridges.) During years I spent training teachers, I owned a small publishing firm for printing and disseminating the story-based curriculum I wrote. Four fables I published for my children were sold when we sold the business, and have made the rounds. One entitled “Warm Fuzzies” became widely told, and in time became a part of the language.

I have had a number of fables published in the business and spiritual-self-help categories. Ken Blanchard, a frequent co-author, taught me how to write fables, following the lead of his and Spencer Johnson’s best-seller, The One-Minute Manager. I came to see, with Aesop, that storytelling is still a way to get a point across. I continue to use the fable as the basis for my books, including five projects that are under way now.