Gathered in the back room of a pub near Slough, our focus group of swing voters began by sharing photographs they had brought along. Each was of a leader, past or present, someone who embodied the qualities they most admired. Several chose “tough” leaders like Thatcher or Churchill, others “virtuous” examples such as Mandela or Gandhi, while a few went for “innovative” individuals like Steve Jobs. Most were historical figures – leaders from another age, discussed with reverence and nostalgia. None were current politicians.

After a dramatic fall from grace, how long can May really last? Read more

A lot has happened in the two years since BritainThinks teamed up with the Observer to understand how voters see leadership. And those events, including the EU referendum, have shaped voter expectations. Back in 2015, our poll revealed “being a great communicator” was the attribute most widely considered to be important for leadership, with 51% of the public placing it in their top three. Now, in an apparent rejection of Blair and Cameron-era smooth talking, communications skills have dropped to third place, overtaken by “integrity”, up 10% and now topping the list. Also on the increase are authenticity (+5%) and empathy (+5%).

We asked our focus group to explain what they meant by integrity. They talked about “being yourself” and “sticking to your beliefs”, but were clear that integrity is more than just honesty – it means being well intentioned too, “putting people first” and being “someone to look up to”. The Queen exemplifies this, as did Mandela and Obama. Leaders with integrity speak their own mind – and when they do they give voice to voters’ own beliefs. At his best, Donald Trump does this well, but was felt by the Slough group to be too unguarded, almost crude: “He says really horrid things sometimes.” Our poll rated more than 20 leaders in terms of their overall effectiveness. Churchill led the field, as he did in 2015, but Trump came last.

These focus group members were also keen students of body language, vigilantly spotting the most revealing “tells”. Theresa May’s words may be tough but our voters felt her body language gave her away, showing timidity and awkwardness. She is not, they believe, her own person: “She just looks scared sometimes. Like she’s been pushed into a room to talk about a decision that someone else has made.”

In hindsight, they feel, maybe May, so shy and self-conscious, never fitted the leadership bill. Our group – some of them her own constituents from nearby Maidenhead – all agreed calling the election had left her fatally wounded: “She seems unstable. When she brought forward the election, that finished her. She looks finished and tired.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jeremy Corbyn: rated high for ‘authenticity’, low for ‘appearance’. Photograph: Ken Jack/Corbis via Getty Images

We used what are called “projective” techniques to get under the skin of these attitudes. If May were an animal, which would she be? Almost half the group chose a rabbit to best describe her: “I just feel that she’s frozen … she looks tired and not particularly effective, like a rabbit in the headlights.” Asked which car best symbolised her, one participant suggested a Reliant Robin three-wheeler: “The fascination is that it doesn’t tip over – it keeps going against the odds.” It was striking that May was only really admired for the guts that she showed in pressing on despite personally challenging circumstances. Yet when faced with a testing situation – Grenfell – she very visibly fell short. All our voters mentioned her perceived failure to read the situation, and her “refusal” to meet grieving residents was another setback.

As May’s reputation declined (BritainThinks research shows this happened rapidly through the 2017 campaign), so Jeremy Corbyn’s improved. His effectiveness score has increased significantly since our poll in 2015, from a lowly mean score of 2.9 to a respectable 4.41, placing him ahead of Nicola Sturgeon, Vince Cable and Boris Johnson.

Corbyn is clearly his own man. Yet while his authenticity is appealing – “he looks like he believes it, he’s not putting it on” – he is nevertheless judged harshly as “not looking like a leader”. All were critical of his appearance. The word most often chosen to describe him was “scruffy”, and voters worried that he would let the country down – “his posture, the way he walks, the way he dresses” meaning that “it would just be a bit embarrassing for him to go and meet the other leaders”.

With this in mind, despite her declining reputation, many voters still believed that May would outperform Corbyn as prime minister. She leads in a series of key policy areas: EU negotiations, national security, immigration, the economy. She is also ahead on “taking tough decisions even if they are unpopular”, while Corbyn wins on “empathy measures” such as “understands people like me”.

The one substantive policy lead for Corbyn is “protecting public services”, but our voters concluded that, although his heart was in the right place, he showed few signs of likelihood to deliver. Some cited the “tuition fee fudge”, where Corbyn was perceived to have backtracked on a popular election pledge as evidence here, but others talked about his general demeanour. The animal he was likened to was a sloth: “very slow-moving. He doesn’t have much of a sense of urgency about him.”

This matters because effective political leadership comes with expectations that loftier vision will translate into tangible voter benefits. Here, our focus groups felt disappointment with both leaders. Reflecting on the 2017 election, many bemoaned the perceived lack of simple measures to make their lives easier: cheaper childcare, affordable tuition fees, accessible housing, improved social care. This implied that neither Corbyn nor May really understood their lives: “Neither one of them is the ideal candidate.” That said, no one could suggest anyone in either party who would be preferable – and yet most felt that both parties would fare better under new leadership.

Our final focus group exercise invited participants to advise Corbyn and May on how to win their votes. A common theme emerged, suggesting that, although integrity has overtaken communications skills in importance, the latter clearly still count. In their advice to the leaders, almost all homed in on the leaders’ personal presentation, and their calls for media training and makeovers suggest a fascinating tension between the need to be “unspun” but also to exude polish.

Our expectations of leadership may change with the times but, it seems, there are enduring qualifying conditions. We demand authenticity, but we want our leaders to authentically match a traditional model of what a successful leader looks like: virtuous, decisive, but also slick.

Deborah Mattinson is founder director of research and strategy consultancy at BritainThinks