What a strange article.

In the first section, the author describes his intention to force a 45 minute long meeting every week, regardless of whether either party has prepared anything. He states the meeting *must* occur weekly, and must be *at least* 30 minutes. He describes his three "moves" for prolonging the discussion when the employee has nothing to talk about.

Then in the section about rants, he states he finds this annoying and suggests cutting the person off and ending the meeting early.

I'm not a ranter or a venter at all as I don't consider my manager to be my therapist or priest. However I recognize that sometimes people just want and need to be heard. Since you're forcing them to attend a 45 minute weekly meeting and they have something they want to talk about, why not bear it and at the conclusion of the time, suggest that next week they think toward some resolution?