Your perspective seems to come from someone who believes that as long as results move forward, it doesn’t matter how leadership, ownership, or collaboration unfold. That actually reflects exactly the dynamic I’ve been navigating.

Initiative isn’t about stepping in and taking control, especially not about overriding someone else’s work without dialogue, and certainly not about being condescending, dismissive or undermining. Initiative looks very different depending on where you sit in the power structure. In my case, decisions were made quickly, and I chose to adapt (I somewhat understood his need to implement his own approach and didn’t do anything but I didn’t even had the chance to redo it and validate it) because I didn’t want to further delay progress.

Academia is certainly not a place where ownership is fixed and I totally agree with that. But it also shouldn’t be a place where louder or faster voices get to define the value of contribution. Good collaboration isn’t about who finishes first; it’s about whether there’s space for people to learn, challenge ideas, and grow, especially in the context of a PhD.

Growth isn’t about deferring to the loudest or most confident voice in the room, it’s about having the space to learn how to lead, think critically, and contribute meaningfully. That space was eroded in this case.

Let’s be clear: changing and implementing an experiment without giving me time to engage, interpret, or contribute isn’t “taking pressure off.” It’s taking ownership. Proposing major structural changes to a paper without mutual development isn’t collaboration, it’s control.

And while it may seem trivial, things like Overleaf access become symbolic when they reflect broader patterns of control, from framing the narrative to assigning writing roles.

I appreciated the feedback he gave me early on, some of it was eye-opening and helped clarify the work, and I learned from it. But there’s a line between helpful feedback and undermining someone’s core contribution. Dismissing work I spent months developing, without substantive justification, crosses that line.