Melinda French Gates has a 48-hour rule for addressing workplace conflict: If she is unhappy with an employee’s work, she says the person will hear from her within two days—but not immediately.

“If I’m unhappy with work you have done, you will hear from me within 48 hours,” French Gates told Bloomberg’s Leaders With Francine Lacqua podcast in March. “I’m not going to tell you right away, because I need time to think it through.”

“If I’m angry about something [I do this] to calm down,” she added. “That’s on me.”

The rule speaks to a question many managers face: whether criticism is most useful delivered in the moment or after a deliberate pause.

French Gates said the practice is not about withholding criticism. Instead, it is intended to ensure that feedback is delivered with honesty, integrity and grace. The other side of the 48-hour rule is equally deliberate: If employees do not receive feedback during that period, they can assume there is no problem with the work in question.

“If they pass the 48-hour mark, they can be confident that the job they did was a good job,” she said. “You’re not going to get to your performance review and have a surprise.”

The billionaire philanthropist has refined the approach over decades of leadership. She cochaired the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, described as the world’s largest private charitable organization, from 2000 until she stepped down in 2024, about three years after her divorce from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.

French Gates now runs Pivotal Ventures, an investment and incubation company she founded in 2015 to advance opportunities for women and families in the United States. Under the terms of her divorce settlement from the Microsoft founder, she received $12.5 billion to direct toward philanthropic work through Pivotal. She also committed an additional $1 billion each year through 2026 to advance women’s power globally, according a Pivotal Ventures announcement.

How French Gates’ leadership approach compares with other executives

Bloomberg’s Francine Lacqua described French Gates’ approach to feedback as her “leadership superpower,” one that requires both emotional discipline and candor.

“Being clear is kind,” French Gates replied, “because I’m giving them feedback so they can actually grow and become better.”

She said the 48-hour practice allows her to preserve her own integrity while maintaining the other person’s dignity. The process, she said, should be “gracious, thoughtful, before you go into it.”

That philosophy differs from more aggressive feedback cultures associated with other executives. Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund firm, built the company’s culture around what he calls “radical transparency.” Under that system, employees at every level are expected to provide unfiltered, real-time criticism, and nearly every meeting is recorded for later analysis.

“If you start to realize, intellectually, that being really truthful with each other is something that is to be treasured,” Dalio told Business Insider, “it’ll build trust.”

“There’s a lot of trust that’s going on,” Dalio added. He recalled that a junior staffer once emailed him a review of his performance in a meeting, giving him a “D-” for being disorganized.

Dalio therefore favors immediate, unvarnished feedback, while French Gates prefers allowing time for reflection before raising a concern and using a more measured tone.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has taken a different approach. After becoming the company’s leader, he pushed Microsoft to move from a “know-it-all” culture to a “learn-it-all” culture centered on humility, curiosity and psychological safety. The concept was inspired by American psychologist Carol Dweck, who is known for her research on motivation and mindset.

“If you take two people—one of them is a learn-it-all and the other one is a know-it-all—the learn-it-all will always trump the know-it-all in the long run, even if they start with less innate capability,” Nadella told Bloomberg in a 2016 interview.

Taken together, the examples show there is no single playbook for delivering criticism: each leader’s approach mirrors the workplace culture they set out to build.

French Gates has emphasized that taking time before offering criticism does not mean avoiding difficult conversations.

“I don’t mind conflict,” she told Bloomberg. “I learned to do it in a way for me that maintained my integrity.”

A version of this story was published on Fortune.com on March 27, 2026. This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.