Her's another point of view, and I sometimes have to deal with some windy colleagues. But I also have to deal with people who, when we're discussing something, just want to get out of their 'effective' meeting a.s.ap. and rush meetings like crazy. The end result is the decision made is useless as we've skipped so much stuff to get to a decision, and we have to do the whole thing again, properly
She sounds very detail orientated - are you? Are the details important? Recalling stuff from a long time ago isn't necessarily a bad thing.
If you're convinced it really is hot air, then get better at steering them. Saying it makes you ineffective and you don't want to talk to her isn't going to impress your manager.
She can see your calendar, yes? Add a really important vapourware meeting directly after the one with her.
Where I work, we have a lot of fairly pointless meetings. Like, half my working week. But the chairs of the meetings are very good at going "well, we've reached our allotted time so we'll have to wrap up there for now, enjoy the rest of your day."
At a previous job we got so many support calls it became impossible to get any work done. We implemented a policy where we would only accept support requests by email unless the report was "my email isn't working." It was surprising how many people's vitally important issues suddenly weren't important enough to spend five minutes writing it down.
As someone else suggested, she's only talking over because you're letting her; talk over her straight back.
Is she WFH on her own by any chance? Is she lonely?
Some people just like to hear the sound of their own voice. I used to work with someone on the next desk who just chunnered away to herself constantly, it drove me mad.
1) Put a time constraint in at the beginning.
2) “What were you hoping the outcome of this meeting would be?”
Consider doing what Lares had to suffer 😉
Never go in without an exit strategy:
Tell her you have another meeting in an hour, and you'll need 15 minutes to prepare.
Arrange for a colleague or friend to call you at a pre-arranged time: "Sorry, this is important"
Interrupt at some point and say "I've got 15 minutes, tell me the most important thing".
I used to just wander off from the new manager that could talk forever with no understanding of the subject or colleagues experience and without pause to take anything on board, leaving it to my line manager to explain to them that I thought they were talking balls and was off to do the job I was being under resourced for whilst they were wasting my time.
That was towards the end of me losing it with the employer generally though 😄
Do you get the point tho'. And all the details, or are you the hopeless one who needs a rerun later as they didn't listen in the first place
