CEOs should not spend too much time influencing and managing the perceptions of external stakeholders, says a survey of the UK’s most prominent business leaders.

CEOs believe it is more important to connect with the firm’s employees and management team than with other stakeholders, according to a study by leadership consultancy Whitehead Mann. The report, ‘What Makes a Great Chief Executive?’ was drawn from more than 80 in-depth interviews with chairmen and chief executives of FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 companies.

The firm asked interviewees to identify the top leadership qualities required to be an outstanding CEO and successfully navigate the current downturn.

One respondent, Jan du Plessis, chairman of British American Tobacco, said: “I think that a chief executive who spends so much time worrying about the external world and, frankly, image and communications, has got his priorities screwed up.”

The finding echoes ‘Resource Based Theory’, an approach to business strategy which sees a firm as a collection of capabilities and emphasises the role of top management in creating a match between those capabilities and its external environment.

As another interviewee, William Mills, Citi’s CEO for Western Europe, Middle East and Africa said: “Manage and lead the firm and the rest will fall into place.”

There was widespread agreement among those interviewed that developing the next generation of managers, the board itself and in some cases their own successor was more important than managing or influencing external stakeholders.

Quintin Price, Blackrock’s chief investment officer for Europe, Middle East, Africa and Pacific, said that a CEO should “be able to reach out and connect, really touch, the employee population. It is not about purely managing stakeholders, it is about inspiring them.”