Help Please! Decision needed!

[Tigana]

I have meeting this pm with nightmare colleague from another department. She is a bully. She asked for the meeting and has been vague about the subject (but she is always vague). I tried contacting her to find out more, but is not in office.
Suspect it is about an area where we, to an extent, share responsibility and where she is being expected to take on more 'hand on' while I become more 'overview'. Also susoect she will try to get me to do more work that she shoudl be doing and agree with her about how it shoudl work in future.

My boss knows she is a bit of a challenge an dis keen I don't take on any more work.

I am useless at confrontation.

My boss has offered to come to the meeting too.

Do I accept the offer - which is what the wimp in me wants to do?
The other side of me thinks it will be awkward as the nightmare woman will know I have asked boss to be there and therefore know I am a wimp and it will seem confrontational. A part of me also thinks FFS you are nearly 30, grow some balls!!

Help! Meeting is lunchtime.

Can you pretend/ act at all? If so try to get into character of very strong assertive woman and treat the meeting as if you are in a play. Work out before you go in what you will accept and what you won't, then stick to it. It might help to tell someone else what you are going to do before you go in to help you stick to your guns.
That was the technique I used to use in similar situs.
I have a brilliant book called 'Tough Talking; how to handle awkward situations by David Martin which helped me out a lot.

Problem is not knowing exactly what she wants to talk about though, so hard to come up with a 'game plan'.

OK - but you know what the likelihood is so make a decision on that anyway. You can still get into the right mindset before you go in.

You have said your boss doesn't want you to take on more work, so that is a convenient get out clause if one is required.

I have said thanks but no thanks to boss ( regret it already!).
Have tried to set out my planned position in email to boss. Basically to listen to what colleague says and what she wants but pretty much say either "no" or that I'll have to refer back to boss for decision due to capacity issues.

Feel somewhat sick now though...

That is my plan. I will basically answer everything with "hmm, yes, I'll have to speak to X about that".

Problem is that she is nasty and a bully and will put pressure on me to agree to something, or if not that then to agree with her point of view on how it should be handled so she can then quote me as being on her side later. Argh.

tell her that your boss is compiling an appraisal of your skills so he would like to 'sit in' on the ,meeting to assess how you handle it!

tigana 'grow some balls' if you can . You will get more respect from your boss and from this bully if you can, even if it means saying no or saying 'I'll get back to you' a lot. Better than taking your boss in to hold your hand. Even if you explain it another way, the bully will think that's why your boss is there which won't help the situation if she is a bit of a bully anyway.

good luck

?? Well.........?

She hasn't sodding turned up yet!!!

There is a clash in her online calendar, so am hoping she can't make it.
Every car I hear makes me flinch slightly in case it's her though!

online calendar! Keep strong.... obviously not as important to her as whatever it was that you clashed with....

just one suggestion if she is a bit bullying.
make sure that you write some notes up from the meeting as to your understanding of the outcomes and send them to her. do it asap after meeting. then she can't try to infer things were agreed to that weren't

also if she is a no show i would prepare an agenda for when meeting is re-arranged. can do it casually - ie shall you prep the agend or shall i type thing.

good luck

agree with mazzystar about getting outcomes in writing - do an email confirming what was said - people like this have a funny habit of remembering meetings a bit 'creatively' sometimes...!

Suspect as no sign of her yet ( 1645 now) she is not coming.
hurrah!
Will definitely get clear steer from her on why she actually wants to meet if she tries to rearrange. Good idea re sending email with what we agreed too.