One change that would have made Bill Gates a better manager, according to Bill Gates

In a rare moment of introspection on the People by WTF podcast, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates peeled back the layers of his managerial past—and admitted that he wasn’t always great at it.

“I think if you want to work hard and not fool yourself, you better be pretty hard on yourself,” Gates told host Nikhil Kamath. But being tough on himself, he added, came with a cost: “It makes you, at first, maybe not a very good manager.”

In the early days of Microsoft, Gates said he managed others the same way he managed himself—demanding,…