A recent Japanese school production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves explored new artistic ground by featuring 25 Snow Whites and no dwarves. The directorial strategy behind this sidekick free initiative was that every child who took part in the story should play the part of the heroine.

Although the visionary dramaturg who orchestrated this innovative performance may have been under great parental pressure, the resulting production accurately reflects the approach taken by many business schools and leadership initiatives.

On any leadership course, one of the first questions to be asked is ‘What is the most important attribute of any leader?’. Various responses are given and elicited, usually along the lines of ‘courage’, ‘vision’, ‘integrity’ and so on. However, the one attribute that any leader really needs is rarely identified, if ever.

The key attribute that all leaders need is followers, but many leadership programmes are encouraging a generation of Snow Whites to stunt their own growth by ignoring the value of others in developing their individual potential.

In Dreamwork, we recognise and encourage both Heroes and Helpers. Instead of fixating on the Hero’s Journey with its single hero and anonymous helpers, we work in Heroic Space, where all participants have the opportunity to be both Heroes and Helpers, depending on their intentions and needs.

Many organisations and institutions now have a gender balance agenda, in which gender discrimination is actively pursued in a doomed attempt to balance the numbers of men and women in leadership positions. However well intentioned this may seem, it often does not produce the intended outcome.

The main reason for this is that a woman who is parachuted into a leadership position in a group of men often ends up behaving like those men, and to all intents and purposes has become a man. In some ways this can be even worse than having a man in the position as the woman may find it difficult to own and assimilate her own masculine energies.

These disowned energies and their potentially destructive aspects are then projected on to others with undesired outcomes. Usually the woman begins to lose the asset that was most valuable in the first place, her feminine perspective, and begins to behave like a Drag King.

The corollary of this situation also occurs frequently, and can be just as potentially destructive, where a man is challenged with voicing and recognising his feminine energies. A man’s skill in voicing his feminine aspects does not require him to be known as ‘Mandy’ at the weekends, or to join the increasing ranks of Travelodge Trannies. Instead, he should perhaps pay attention to archetypally feminine attributes such as intuition, empathy and compassion.

Carl Jung described a man’s feminine energies as his Anima, and a woman’s masculine energies as her Animus. For an individual to grow and develop into their most authentic potential, these energies should be in a healthy balance. Rather than decreeing target numbers based on external gender assessment, perhaps organisations should focus their energies on encouraging the inner balance of masculine and feminine energies. What happens inside, happens outside.