Where Is Human-Centered Leadership Going In 2026?

These days, all major consulting firms and business authorities are publishing their predictions about business trends they are anticipating for 2026. Across different reports and perspectives, one theme is present, although with variations in terminology: change and transformation.

Change resistance cycle

And regarding change, a vicious cycle keeps showing up in organizations. People get exhausted by constant change. That exhaustion reduces their willingness to experiment with new behaviors required for adaptation. Leaders respond by accelerating change even more. The result is a reinforcing cycle of stress, uncertainty, and change resistance.

The answer to breaking this cycle is human-centered leadership.

Human-centered leadership is going to matter even more in 2026

Human-centric leadership is often framed as being desirable because it is more humane. Research shows it is also better for business outcomes.

According to Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends 2025, organizations that successfully increase people’s capacity to grow personally, use imagination, and think deeply are 1.8 times more likely to report better financial results.

McKinsey Global Institute conducted a longitudinal study across 1,800 companies and identified a group they label “People + Performance Winners”, organizations that invest systematically in skills and human capital while maintaining high performance standards.

Key findings include:

• Revenue growth: These companies achieved revenue growth that was twice as fast (8% vs. 4% annually) compared to companies focused only on performance.

• Return on investment: For every dollar invested in human capital, P+P Winners generated 30% higher revenue growth than companies focused only on performance or only on people.

What exactly is human-centered leadership

There are many definitions and views, but one of my favorites is how Gartner describes it. Gartner defines human-centric leadership through three core components that together enable leaders to respond effectively to people and context:

• Authentic: Focus on purpose and enabling genuine self-expression for oneself and for others.

• Empathetic: Sincere care, respect, and commitment to employee well-being.

• Adaptive: Flexibility and support tailored to the unique needs of individual team members.

  
  

When these three elements are present together, they form leadership that is genuinely centered on people.

Why human centered strategies need to start from leaders

An organization-wide employee experience strategy must include leadership approach at its core. 

Here is one of the reasons. By 2030, approximately 30% of the workforce will be Gen Z, and they expect personalization when evet it is possible. Experience cannot be fully cascaded top-down; it is often created in the moment, taking into account context. The leader is the person best positioned to shape that experience.

This means that an organization cannot be truly human-centric if its leaders are not practicing human-centric leadership on the ground, through mindset, skills, and genuine intention to balance people’s needs with business demands in specific daily situations.

A common question is how leaders are expected to personalize experiences while still delivering results and driving transformation.

The answer lies in how the leadership role itself is changing. Many operational and managerial tasks (like coordination, organizing, onboarding administration, follow-ups, etc.) are already partially automated. This allows leaders to focus more on leadership aspects of the role:

• recognizing individual needs,

• deciding how to respond in context,

• keeping people engaged and willing to contribute in line with their own purpose.

  
  

To be able to do that, leaders need to develop mindset, skillset, and versatility in using various resources to respond to the specific employee's needs and the business requirements.

Some leadership development approaches insisted on skills development which may be too simplistic according to Harvard Business Impact - Leadership Fitness.

Some examples:

• Strengths-based leadership, which can unintentionally exclude development opportunities by over-focusing on what leaders already do well.

• Over-emphasis on psychological safety, which can weaken intellectual honesty. An MIT study found that too much emphasis on psychological safety may reduce people’s willingness to voice disagreement, out of fear of hurting others or threatening belonging.

• Formula-based approaches, where predefined behaviors are prescribed for specific situations or employee “stages.”

  
  

While there is value in learning from these approaches, none of them are sufficient on their own. Leaders need the capability to choose the most appropriate response for a given person and organizational context. This capability cannot be delegated to HR, People & Culture teams, or executive leadership.

Where organization wide approach works

Some people needs and wants are universal and they can be addressed at the organizational level.

According to SHRM’s “What Global Workers Want” study, across 16 countries (6 continents represented) workers consistently rank the following as very or extremely important:

• good pay and benefits

• fair and respectful treatment.

For the few countries for whom both of these job features were not the two ranked highly by the most respondents, they were still within the top five job features people said are very or extremely important. This suggests high convergence on good pay and benefits and a fair and respectful work environment as highly important to people across the globe. The only other job feature that consistently ranked in the top five features that the most people, regardless of country, consider very or extremely important was job security and stability.

What every leader can do

Leaders can work toward stronger human-centric leadership by:

• Increasing self-awareness, especially around their reactions under stress, and learning to pause before choosing behaviors and giving appropriate attention to their own well-being.

• Deliberately stretching their capabilities through challenging assignments, learning with peers, and exposure to different perspectives.

  
  

Leadership development needs to support this depth of work. In Leadership Guild, this is done through 360-degree feedback, peer learning, and psychologically safe environments (+intellectual honesty included - as suggested by MIT study) that allow leaders to see the full range of their leadership patterns and consciously evolve them.