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Abstract
Over the last decades, the evolution of leadership practice has increasingly centered on a human-oriented paradigm, founded upon the fundamental values of humanistic psychology, including empathy, self-actualization, and moral reflection. Engineering firms, though, have had difficulty adopting these values into their traditional technical and hierarchical leadership frameworks, such that a gap has emerged between the implementation of humanistic leadership in such settings. This study aims to fill this gap by developing a step-by-step plan for the systematic implementation of humanistic leadership in engineering firms using Kotter's 8-Step Change Model. With a qualitative research design, the present research integrates an extensive literature review with case study research on six engineering firms—Panasonic, IKEA, Salesforce, Zappos, Tata, and Google's Project Aristotle—to explore leadership issues and possibilities of change with humanistic leadership. The findings of the study suggest that those organizations that apply humanistic leadership practices will improve employee motivation, innovation, and financial performance. Kotter's model offers a framework method for the successful adoption of these practices, but its success lies in adjustments explicitly crafted for the unique cultural and organizational environments of engineering firms. The proposed framework offers practical guidance to leaders who aspire to create ethical, people-oriented cultures that yield long-term prosperity. Nonetheless, the research is constrained by its qualitative nature, lacking empirical validation through quantitative measures. Quantitative methods should be considered in future research to facilitate generalizability. The current study adds value to leadership literature through the provision of a structured, step-by-step model of adopting humanistic leadership in engineering management, and subsequently improving organizational performance and workers' well-being.