Meetings with someone like this often need to be led firmly. A few points come to mind that can help here:
- Try to ask specific questions rather than general questions or for opinions.
- If he fails to answer the (specific) question at hand, call him out on it.
- If he interrupts someone, call him out on it, stop him, and then hand the floor back to the person who he interrupted.
- If he's rambling for too long without getting to a point, don't be afraid to ask him to get to the point (politely, of course.)
So instead of saying:
We're looking to migrate all our source repositories over from Subversion to Git. What do you think?
You could ask:
We're looking to migrate all our active source repositories over from Subversion to Git. The challenges we've thought of so far with this are detailed on the handout in front of you. Can anyone suggest anything else to add to this list?
If (Bill) then kicks in with something that's not outlining a challenge, or is something irrelevant, then you can cut in with something like:
Bill, I'm happy to cover that specific point later on, but that's taking us off track now.
Then repeat the question. If he keeps doing this, then just be consistent, keep cutting him off, and make it clear that the meeting isn't a platform for him to just voice any old ideas. Similarly, if he interrupts someone who's giving an answer:
Bill, I'm happy to come to you in a bit, but can we let Alex finish first?
If, even after introducing this structure, Bill is still being disruptive in meetings, then that's the right time to pull him into a 1 to 1 and ask him to be more respectful of others.