“Compassionate Samurai” is a term that was coined by Brian Klemmer to describe the ideal type of leader. The founder of the leadership-training organization Klemmer, he came up with this term after coming to the realization that there are two types of people in the world: those who are honest and benevolent but lack the tools to effect real change, and those who consistently make things happen but have no regard for the damage they cause in the process.
Compassionate Samurai embody the best traits of these two types of people. Brian Klemmer’s goal was to create a world full of these leaders.
Unfortunately, in the modern workplace where all that seems to matter is results, organizations have lagged in their leadership development. With a growth-at-all-costs mindset being so prevalent, the importance of character among leaders has frequently been neglected.
Defining a High-Character Leader
According to a 2024 article in Harvard Business Impact, high-character leaders are consistently ethical in the way that they conduct business. Examples of ethical behavior include being honest, treating coworkers fairly, and speaking up when something is wrong. Research has shown how valuable these traits are to employees, with 88 percent believing that their organizations need more ethical senior-level leaders.
But being a high-character leader means more than simply being ethical. High-character leaders are also willing to serve, forgive, and show compassion for others—the latter being a fundamental trait of a Compassionate Samurai. The Harvard Business Impact article goes on to say that self-awareness, determination, optimism, and curiosity are also among the key traits of this type of leader.
Benefits of Having High-Character Leaders
The 2015 book Return on Character: The Real Reason Leaders and Their Companies Win by Fred Kiel lays out research showing that organizations whose employees rate their CEOs as being high-character leaders outperform organizations whose employees rate their CEOs as being low-character leaders. And the difference is not simply a rounding error. Kiel found that CEOs who are recognized by their employees as being high-character leaders drive a return on investment that is five times higher than those recognized by their employees as being low-character leaders.
High-character leaders achieve these results by setting norms that influence employees to be better. Because organizational leaders typically oversee staff members, their behavior can have a positive downstream effect that reverberates across an organization.
Decision-Making Responsibilities Are Increasing
The need for high-character leaders is only growing as decision-making responsibilities are increasingly dispersed across organizations. According to a 2022 study, 34 percent of employees make decisions at their jobs on a daily basis. This means successful organizations need high-character leaders at all levels, not only in senior roles.
Unfortunately, while 83 percent of businesses acknowledge the importance of having strong leaders across an organization, only 5 percent are successful in developing them. Without these leaders in place, organizations risk having an unmotivated, underperforming workforce. According to a 2022 survey, only 23 percent of employees are engaged, while 69 percent say that they would apply themselves more fully if they received more appreciation from their employers.
Transformative Leadershp Training
Since 1995, Klemmer and associates has provided transformative leadership training aimed at equipping people with the tools to become Compassionate Samurai. The organization has more than 45,000 graduates who have benefited from courses such as Personal Mastery, Heart of the Samurai, Advanced Leadership Training, and more.
Klemmer also works with many notable companies. Whether partnering with Hewlett-Packard, Aetna, or General Electric, Klemmer provides specialized training that has helped these and other organizations achieve their business goals.
How Does Klemmer Transform Organizations?
Klemmer’s training centers on the belief that every person has a subconscious belief system. These belief systems—or sunglasses, as Klemmer calls them—have a dramatic effect on our lives. Can you remember a time when you did something you promised yourself you wouldn’t do, or even did something without realizing you did it?
These are our sunglasses—our subconscious belief systems—at work. According to Klemmer, our sunglasses make 99 percent of our decisions for us, meaning we’re largely unaware of what’s driving our behavior.
For organizations, when every employee is wearing their own sunglasses, workplace culture suffers. Employees are unable to recognize how their choices are stifling success, and with these issues going unchecked, organizational performance declines.
Through Klemmer’s Private Corporate Mastery workshops, Klemmer teaches employees how to remove their sunglasses. With the help of a Klemmer facilitator, staff members learn to observe their own feelings and behaviors. They then work backward to uncover the specific issue hindering their teams. Because every team is different, Klemmer’s facilitators customize their approach for each client.
Compassionate Samurai
With their sunglasses removed, employees can see how they best fit into an organization and how they can support it in fulfilling its mission. They are able to recognize how they can work cooperatively with their colleagues to solve problems. And they are able to empathize and see the strengths in others. In short, they became high-character leaders, the Compassionate Samurai that Klemmer believes are vital to building a successful organization.
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