Recent rationalisation of academic work has challenged the role of traditional supervision, which still plays a significant part in students' experiences of their doctoral studies. Accordingly, we give a voice to doctoral students' lived experiences and trace how relationship dynamics are constructed during encounters between the supervisor and supervisee in the contemporary academic context. We approach the topic with interview data and written stories from 33 doctoral students. First, aided by the LMX theory, our findings demonstrate supervisory relationships to be leader–follower relationships that contain imbalanced power relations. Second, a narrative reading of our data helped us identify the critical moments and encounters that pushed relationships towards either a fruitful co-operation or a destructive endeavour. Our findings add a critical view to the mainstream pedagogical research on supervising practices. In addition, we contribute to the research on doctoral students’ wellbeing by demonstrating how a combination of intertwined elements explain the overall satisfaction and experience of the supervision.

最近学术工作的合理化挑战了传统监督的作用，传统监督仍然在学生的博士学习经历中发挥着重要作用。因此，我们在博士生的生活经历中发声，并追踪在当代学术背景下导师和被督导人之间的相遇过程中如何建立关系动态。我们通过采访数据和来自33位博士生的书面故事来探讨该主题。首先，在LMX理论的帮助下，我们的发现证明了监督关系成为领导者与跟随者之间的关系，其中包含不平衡的权力关系。其次，对数据的叙述性阅读帮助我们确定了关键时刻和遭遇，从而使关系朝着富有成效的合作或破坏性的努力前进。我们的发现为有关监督实践的主流教学法研究添加了批判性的观点。此外，我们将通过展示相互交织的要素如何解释监督的总体满意度和经验，为博士生的幸福感研究做出贡献。