The last word

This is how we started this section in our previous issue:

"We hope you enjoyed this issue of Nurturing Potential.  We have lots of great ideas for future issues and would like to do more than simply share them with you here.  We would really welcome hearing from readers, particularly if you care to contribute articles or ideas.  If you are interested in sharing our vision and wish to be considered for a position on our editorial board, please let us know." 

That message remains as relevant now as it was then.

In the meantime we have received feedback letting us know that the first issue of Nurturing Potential was enjoyed.  We are feeling quite bullish about this second issue which has benefited greatly from your feedback.

Our editorial referred to a problem we had had with material that had been "borrowed" from other sources.  This was quite an eye-opener to us.  As authors ourselves we are particularly concerned about the issue of copyright, and the protection thereof.  We thought we had taken all the requisite steps to ensure that all reproduction rights were honoured and that permission had been duly obtained.  Somewhat ingenuously, we did not consider that some "purveyors" of therapies designed to promote a healthier person might have a profound objection to being closely aligned spatially in a magazine with others who shared the same aspiration.

Well it was a valuable learning experience.  And it had the unexpected benefit of introducing us to people and material that will be of great interest and value to future issues of Nurturing Potential.  A further benefit will be the availability of much more original material as a result of the connections we have made.  We will, however, continue to bring to your attention previously published articles that we consider of interest and feel you may be unlikely to have seen.

We would like to encourage you to send your questions on matters of concern for response by our editorial team.  We are not proposing an "agony aunt" column to help with the type of sexual, relationship, or domestic issues that you might find in the tabloid newspapers (although I have no doubt that Peta Heskell, our Relationships Editor, would have no difficulty in dealing with them appropriately and adequately), but you will have noted that our editorial team covers a vast range of interests and experience, and we would love to respond to your problems or concerns, or simply queries, individually or as a forum.

Understanding ourselves and our relationships.  This will be the main theme of our next issue, developed from the viewpoint of personality assessment.

Understanding personality can be a useful tool in the way we communicate and interact with others in most of our relationships.  By understanding why others behave the way they do and how they experience things differently from ourselves, we are better able to connect with them sympathetically and empathetically. 

This can be of value in such activities as team formation and teamwork.  Recognising the differences of personality between people; acknowledging the need to use the differing skills that accompany those differences; understanding that each different personality will enhance and complement the skills of others; all this helps the process of choosing the right people to complete an effective team and reduces the potential for conflict.

Little wonder, therefore, that personality assessment systems have become so intrinsic a part of the way teams are created nowadays in so many areas of social, business, and academic life – in creating more effective teams; in improving communication between members of the team, horizontally and vertically; in identifying needs and tasks, and finding the right people to fit them; in training others to create and build on successful and life-enhancing relationships.

It is also valuable as a diagnostic tool in interpreting and dealing with illness and disease in the physical body and our mental processes, and identifying how the two are interlinked.

It may be said – and we ourselves have some sympathy with this view – that there is too great a multiplicity of systems on offer for personality assessment, many of them having little if any difference from others.  And, as in so many areas of life, they include those whose aim is less concerned with helping others than rewarding themselves – albeit that helping others may be a coincidental result.  But to condemn the few cynical exponents is to do scant justice to the vast body of genuine trainers and researchers.

It is not part of our remit to “separate the wheat from the chaff” for you, but the main theme and purpose of our next issue is to guide you through some of these systems and make them more accessible.  Amongst the systems we shall be considering are (and there is no significance to the order in which these are here presented):

Jungian Model (Extravert, Introvert, Ambivert) and Archetypes.

Myers-Briggs Model (Extravert, Introvert, Intuitive, Sensor, Thinker, Feeler, Judger,    Perceiver).

Enneagram Model (Inspirer, Helper, Achiever, Creator, Thinker, Supporter, Player, Winner, Pacifist)

Satir Model (Placator, Blamer, Computer, Distractor)

Transactional Analysis (Parent, Adult, Child; Persecutor, Victim, Rescuer)

Psychosynthesis (Sub-personalities)

This is a mere sample.  Furthermore many of our feature articles will be written with personality assessment in mind.  So you may happily anticipate an excellent next issue.

Future issues will be featuring some of the following themes:

Science, Pseudo-Science, and Holistic Therapy - following our correspondence with the originator of the Skeptic's Dictionary we are being permitted to use site material that will give the background to many of the therapies currently in vogue - some of which may be real "eye-openers".

Action Profiling - its growth and development and its application to team-building and nurturing potential for growth by profiling individual strengths and weaknesses. 

Nurturing Ecological Potential - how the environment - general, personal, and domestic - may be preserved and enhanced. 

Potions, Nostrums and Ancient Remedies and their potential for health in the modern world.  We will be examining such products as Kefir and Colloidal Silver.   

Bridging Cultural Differences - Class, Religion, Ethnicity, Education - the status quo versus innovation, as applied in our personal and professional aspirations.

Only Connect.  Networks and networking and their potential for self- and group-development.