Virgin's Sir Richard Branson has been voted Britain's Most Inspirational Business Leader, followed closely by Bill Gates and Lord Sugar.
The survey, part of a white paper commissioned by the National Business Awards, also found that more than half of employees said they would be inspired if their boss or the business they work for was to win an award.
And the top five personality traits of a good leader were found to be being honest, a good communicator, being hardworking, being trustworthy, having intelligence.
By contrast, the top five personality traits of a bad leader were found to be untrustworthiness, being patronising, having poor communication skills, instilling fear, and being over confident.
There also appears to be a huge gulf between bosses who think they're a good leader, and what their staff think - 86.4% of bosses considered themselves to be good leaders, but just 31% of employees thought their boss was any good.
The research was carried out online by Opinion Matters between 21 February, 2013 and 26 February, 2013 across 1,010 UK employees and 257 business decision makers.
The full list of the top 20 bosses can be seen in the gallery below.