Most leaders tend to be better at either building relationships with employees or setting strong performance requirements for them, but the best CEOs and managers do both equally well. This is the focus of my latest article for Forbes – The Critical Balance CEOs and Managers Must Strike To Get Results – where I provide several ways to evaluate and improve your skills in both areas.

For some CEOs building relationships comes naturally. They have no problem engaging personally with employees at all levels of the organization. Employees like the attention they receive from these personable CEOs and return the affection. Their desire for relatedness is fulfilled, and they get a status bump every time the CEO delivers kind words of praise. There’s nothing wrong with this, but there is a problem when the relationship impacts running the business.

At the other extreme is the hard-charging CEO who sets stringent performance requirements but doesn’t show any interest in employees. As I described in “CEO Fail: The Attila the Hun CEO,” this type of CEO doesn’t engender any sort of loyalty. While he may think he’s driving top performance, employees will not put forth their best effort for him. Many will soon leave for better work environments.

Read the full post for how to achieve balance between relating and requiring and let me know what you think: http://www.forbes.com/sites/joeltrammell/2014/05/06/the-critical-balance-ceos-and-managers-must-strike-to-get-results/