The Dragon That’s Sabotaging Your Workplace—And How to Tame It Before It’s Too Late

In partnership with

Every organisation claims they want an inclusive, high-performing workplace.

They roll out diversity hiring programs, invest in leadership development initiatives, and host mental health and well-being workshops.

Yet despite these efforts, the same frustrations remain:

🔹 Diverse employees keep leaving.
🔹 Leaders struggle to shift workplace culture.
🔹 DEEI professionals burn out fighting resistance.

It’s not just bad luck. It’s not just “not the right time.”

🚨 It’s the dragon that no one wants to face.

Every system, every policy, every decision you make—consciously or unconsciously—feeds this dragon.

It thrives in silence. It grows in overlooked biases. It shapes the very walls of your organisation, ensuring that those who challenge it are questioned, exhausted, or excluded.

This isn’t just about who gets hired or who gets promoted. It’s about who is allowed to lead, who is trusted with power, and who is set up to fail before they ever begin.

The most dangerous part? This dragon is invisible to those it benefits and undeniable to those it hunts.

And for too long, corporate leaders have treated the dragon like an anomaly—an isolated problem that can be solved with training, awareness, or good intentions.

It is not an anomaly. It is the system itself.

So the real question is: Are you willing to tame the dragon—or will you let it continue dictating the future of your workplace?

Want to get the most out of ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is a superpower if you know how to use it correctly.

Discover how HubSpot's guide to AI can elevate both your productivity and creativity to get more things done.

Learn to automate tasks, enhance decision-making, and foster innovation with the power of AI.

Download the free guide with actionable prompts and tips to make your work more productive.

🔥 1️. The Unseen Force: Why Self-Doubt in the Workplace Is a Systemic Issue

At first, everything seems structured, predictable. The corporate world rewards order, compliance, and a sense of certainty.

Employees follow defined pathways, leaders implement policies, DEEI teams design initiatives—each piece seemingly working toward progress.

Yet beneath this surface, something lingers.

A hidden force, felt but rarely acknowledged.

A resistance that grows in moments of discomfort—when a marginalised employee hesitates to speak in a leadership meeting, when a DEEI officer fights for policies that leadership sees as “too much,” when a high-achieving executive quietly wonders if they truly belong in the room.

🚨 This force is the dragon.

It is not just an internal fear, not just imposter syndrome, not just a mindset issue.

It is a systemic construct—woven into workplace culture, reinforced through unconscious bias, and sustained by leadership models designed to preserve power structures rather than redistribute them.

Some ignore the dragon. Some fear it. Some pretend it does not exist.

But you?

You have encountered it too many times to turn away.

The real question is: Will you tame it—or let it continue to shape your organisation’s future?

The Call to Transformation: Confronting the Dragon in Corporate Spaces

At some point, every organisation reaches a threshold moment—a point where the fractures in workplace culture become impossible to ignore.

• For DEEI strategists, it shows up as resistance to diversity initiatives that demand more than performative inclusion.

• For HR executives, it appears in high turnover rates among diverse employees, despite inclusive hiring practices.

• For leaders, it manifests as the ongoing struggle to gain buy-in for genuine cultural change.

This is the moment of recognition—the dragon revealing itself in the form of:

• Unspoken power dynamics that dictate who advances and who remains stagnant.

• The quiet discomfort of employees who do not feel safe enough to be themselves.

• The systemic inertia that keeps leadership structures unchanged, despite external pressures.

At this point, many organisations retreat—scaling back DEEI initiatives, dismissing transformation as "too risky," or shifting the burden onto employees rather than taking ownership at the leadership level.

But the truth remains:

The dragon does not disappear.

It lingers in every biased performance evaluation, every leadership meeting where a handful of voices dominate, every hiring process where “culture fit” is used as a justification for exclusion.

The Moment of Reckoning: A Pause Before the Shift

Take a moment to reflect on your organisation:

• How often do you default to the existing system rather than challenge it?

• Where have you seen exclusion at play but stayed silent because it was safer?

• When was the last time you heard someone justify a biased outcome by saying, "That’s just the way things are"?

Because here’s the reality—taming the dragon doesn’t start with fighting it.

It starts with understanding it, learning its nature, and reshaping the system so that exclusion is no longer embedded in its design.

This is where ICC™, IF™, and the 4R Regenerative Resilience Framework™ provide the roadmap for transformation.

ICC™ – From Workplace Compliance to Cultural Transformation

Why Most DEEI Efforts Fail

Most organisations approach diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEEI) as a metric problem, focusing on hiring numbers instead of addressing power structures.

The assumption:
"If we hire more diverse employees, our workplace will naturally become more inclusive."

This is a fundamental misconception.

Workplaces do not default to inclusion. They default to maintaining existing power dynamics. That is why:

• Hiring Black and Brown employees without reworking leadership models leads to tokenisation rather than real influence.

• Bringing in more women without addressing bias in promotion pipelines results in glass ceilings that remain unbroken.

• Adding mental health initiatives without addressing cultural exclusion leaves systemic burnout unchallenged.

Without structural transformation, these issues persist despite well-intentioned DEEI initiatives.

The ICC™ Oppressive Pyramid: How Power Is Manufactured and Maintained

The traditional workplace operates like a pyramid, concentrating power at the top while keeping most people excluded.

• Privileged Core (0.5%) – Holds systemic decision-making power, controls economic and social resources, and dominates leadership structures.

• Institutional Buffer (9.5%) – A layer of leadership and management that maintains proximity to power while reinforcing existing hierarchies.

• Intersectional Majority (87.56%) – The workforce that experiences partial inclusion, often facing invisible barriers to advancement.

• Dispossessed Edge (2.44%) – Those with the least systemic access, facing extreme marginalisation and exclusion from leadership opportunities.

How This Pyramid Sustains Workplace Exclusion

• Privilege Is Inherited, Not Earned – Leadership remains concentrated in a small, homogenous group, often through unspoken networks rather than merit.

• The Intersectional Majority Stays Fragmented – Employees from diverse backgrounds are encouraged to compete for limited opportunities rather than reshape workplace systems.

• The Dispossessed Edge Is Made Invisible – Barriers to entry are rationalised as a lack of “qualified talent” rather than acknowledged as systemic exclusion.

This pyramid was never designed for inclusion—it was designed to preserve existing power structures.

The ICC™ Power Pyramid shifts this entirely, ensuring that leadership is restructured, power is distributed, and systemic exclusion is no longer a built-in feature of the workplace.

The ICC™ Power Pyramid: Flipping the Leadership Model

ICC™ reverses this outdated structure—ensuring that leadership power is:
✅ Distributed, not hoarded.
✅ Regenerative, not extractive.
✅ Sustained by equity, not performative inclusion.

🔼 Intersectional Majority → Leads systemic change.
🔼 Dispossessed Edge → Centered in decision-making rather than erased.
🔼 Privileged Core → No longer in control, but integrated into a wider leadership model.

What Changes in This Pyramid?
✅ Leadership is redistributed → No more gatekeeping of executive positions.
✅ Mental well-being is built into leadership → No more sacrificing personal health for “performance.”
✅ The system evolves constantly → The pyramid does not regenerate oppression—it prevents it.

This is NOT about reversing the hierarchy (putting a different group at the top).
It’s about replacing hierarchy altogether.

IF™ – Rebuilding Corporate Structures for Future Inclusion

While ICC™ fixes the present, Intersectional Futurism™ (IF™) designs the future.

Traditional corporate DEEI efforts focus on past injustices, trying to correct them retroactively.

IF™ asks: What if we built a workplace where exclusion never happened in the first place?

IF™ ensures that corporate culture is future-proof, embedding intersectionality into:
✅ Corporate innovation – ensuring leadership decisions adapt to diverse global workforces.
✅ AI and automation – eliminating bias from hiring algorithms, workplace analytics, and promotion assessments.
✅ Organisational adaptability – ensuring that future crises (economic shifts, industry disruptions) do not reinforce existing inequalities.

IF™ replaces the traditional pyramid structure with a regenerative leadership model: The ICC™ Circles.

⭕ The ICC™ Circles Model: A System That Evolves in Every Direction

🌀 Instead of a rigid pyramid, ICC™ operates as expanding circles of transformation.

🔵 INNER CIRCLE → Individual transformation (Mental health, identity, healing).
🔵🔵 MIDDLE CIRCLE → Organisational change (Workplace, institutions, leadership).
🔵🔵🔵 OUTER CIRCLE → Systemic evolution (Laws, economy, AI, governance).

Why Circles Work:
✅ They are self-sustaining.
✅ They eliminate exclusion—no one is pushed to the margins.
✅ They expand continuously, ensuring change is ongoing.

Why This Model Works in ICC™:
✅ Individuals heal first → No more internalised oppression.
✅ Organisations shift next → Workplaces become structurally inclusive.
✅ Systems evolve last → Policy and governance integrate intersectionality.

Each circle supports the next—so that inclusion is not just leadership at the top, but transformation at every level.

This is how ICC™ prevents oppression from re-emerging.
This is how we build a future where equity is not just possible—it’s inevitable.

Embedding ICC™ & IF™ Into Organisational Strategy Using the 4R Regenerative Resilience Framework™

Recognising the dragon is not enough. Taming it requires reshaping the workplace system itself.

This is where most organisations fail.

They acknowledge exclusion. They may even introduce diversity training, unconscious bias workshops, or mentorship programs.

Yet, over time, the system resists.

Why?

Because inclusion is not about adding policies—it’s about restructuring power.

The key to taming the dragon is not fighting harder—it’s shifting how the system itself operates.

The 4R Regenerative Resilience Framework™ ensures that ICC™ and IF™ are not just concepts, but embedded tools for long-term transformation.

Step 1: Recognise (Unmasking Systemic Barriers to Inclusion & Leadership)

What must be recognised?
✅ Self-doubt is not an individual issue. It is the natural outcome of workplace structures that reward sameness and penalise difference.
✅ Burnout among DEEI professionals is not a failure of resilience. It is a signal that the system demands more from those creating change than from those resisting it.
✅ Leadership pipelines are not broken—they are built to function in a way that prioritises existing power structures.

Without recognition, transformation is impossible.

Example:
A high-performing Black employee is consistently praised but overlooked for promotion. Instead of questioning their own competence, leadership must recognise:
✅ Is leadership development designed for intersectional talent?
✅ Are decision-makers unconsciously gatekeeping leadership roles?
✅ Are promotion processes measuring cultural “fit” rather than leadership capability?

Corporate Action:
✅ Conduct Bias Audits in leadership hiring and succession planning.
✅ Map which employees receive mentorship and leadership training—and which do not.
✅ Track employee attrition by identity to expose hidden barriers.

If an organisation does not track where the dragon appears, it cannot be tamed.

Step 2: Reframe (Shifting the Narrative from Compliance to Cultural Evolution)

What must be reframed?

• Leadership is not about who "naturally rises" to the top—it is about who the system allows to succeed.

• Diversity is not just about who is in the room—it is about who holds power in the room.

• Belonging is not a "bonus" of workplace culture—it is the foundation of sustainable success.

Example:
An organisation implements a mental health initiative but only focuses on individual resilience rather than structural support. Employees from marginalised backgrounds still feel exhausted and isolated.

The reframe:
✅ Instead of asking "How do we support employees through stress?" ask, "How do we eliminate stressors built into workplace culture?"
✅ Instead of encouraging “self-care,” ensure leadership is held accountable for creating psychologically safe environments.
✅ Instead of positioning mental health as an individual responsibility, integrate ICC™ into leadership evaluations.

Reframing means shifting from treating symptoms to addressing the root cause.

Step 3: Respond (Turning Strategy Into Actionable Leadership)

What must be changed?

• DEEI cannot be an “initiative” that sits outside of leadership strategy.

• Mental health cannot be treated as an employee problem—it must be a workplace design problem.

• Inclusion must move from policy statements to structural transformation.

Without embedding ICC™ into leadership decision-making, nothing changes.

Example:
A company conducts bias training, but leadership remains unchanged. DEEI remains an HR function rather than a business function.

The response:
✅ Move from policy-driven inclusion to action-driven leadership.
✅ Ensure mentorship, sponsorship, and leadership development opportunities are intersectionally designed.
✅ Develop an accountability system that ensures diversity is not just hired but elevated.

Corporate Action:
✅ Redesign leadership training to focus on cultural competence, intersectionality, and bias disruption.
✅ Embed ICC™ leadership coaching at the executive level to ensure inclusion starts at the top.
✅ Incorporate IF™ into corporate strategy so that inclusion is not reactive—it is built into the future of the organisation.

A system that only responds to crises is a system destined to fail. ICC™ ensures proactivity, not reactivity.

Step 4: Rebuild (Creating Regenerative, Intersectional Leadership Models)

What must be rebuilt?
✅ Leadership pipelines must be reconstructed to centre diverse experiences, skills, and knowledge.
✅ Workplace cultures must shift from hierarchical to regenerative, where inclusion is sustained without external pressure.
✅ DEEI must evolve from compliance-driven to vision-driven, where intersectionality is not an afterthought, but the foundation.

Example:
An organisation seeks to implement Intersectional Futurism™ (IF™) into its leadership strategy.

Instead of:
❌ "How do we improve our diversity numbers?"
It asks:
✅ "How do we design a workplace where the need for DEEI initiatives is eliminated because the system itself is already inclusive?"

🔹 Corporate Action:
✅ Redesign leadership development programs to centre ICC™.
✅ Implement Intersectional Futurism™ principles to build structures that sustain long-term equity.
✅ Move from Pyramid Leadership (hierarchical, exclusive) to Circular Leadership (adaptive, inclusive).

 Rebuilding means ensuring that today’s solutions do not become tomorrow’s limitations.

The Final Transformation: The Dragon Was Never the Enemy

Every workplace will encounter the dragon.

Most will:
❌ Ignore it.
❌ Fear it.
❌ Pretend it does not exist.

But the organisations that thrive will be the ones that tame it.

For too long, workplaces have treated self-doubt, exclusion, and bias as individual challenges rather than recognising them as systemic outcomes.

The dragon was never the thing to be slain.

 It was the thing organisations were always meant to become.

Next Steps:
✅ Conduct an ICC™ Leadership Audit to identify systemic barriers in your organisation.
✅ Implement Intersectional Leadership Training for executives to build future-ready workplace cultures.
✅ Redefine workplace success to prioritise psychological safety, intersectionality, and regenerative leadership models.

The organisations that define the future will be the ones that do not just tame the dragon—but ride it into a future that has never existed before.

The only question left is:

Will your organisation be one of them?

About the Author: Jarell Bempong

I don’t do surface-level change. I rewrite the systems that shape power, leadership, and inclusion.

I’m Jarell Bempong, the creator of Intersectional Cultural Consciousness™ (ICC™) and Intersectional Futurism™ (IF™)—frameworks designed to do what traditional DEEI strategies fail to do: dismantle exclusion at the root and rebuild workplaces that thrive on equity, not performative diversity.

For too long, corporate leadership has treated inclusion as an initiative rather than an inevitability. That’s why I developed the 4R Regenerative Resilience Framework™, a blueprint for organisations ready to move beyond policy statements and into structural transformation.

I’ve seen how high-potential talent gets trapped in workplace pyramids, how leadership structures resist change, and how HR and DEEI professionals burn out fighting against a system designed to protect itself. I created ICC™ and IF™ to change that.

I don’t just talk about the future of leadership—I design it.

📩 Let’s build it together. Connect with me here: LinkedIn