We explain the construction of minimal tilting complexes for objects of highest weight categories and we study in detail the minimal tilting complexes for standard objects and simple objects. For certain categories of representations of complex simple Lie algebras, affine Kac-Moody algebras and quantum groups at roots of unity, we relate the multiplicities of indecomposable tilting objects appearing in the terms of these complexes to the coefficients of Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials.