Any experienced line managers on how I can handle this?
Deeply frustrating. Boss and I have been supervising a doctoral student since September. He'll be with us for three years. Boss specifically asked me to be involved with this project, I didn't volunteer!
My boss is obviously more experienced than me, so I tend to let him take the lead. If he makes a decision, I'll agree with it (he's the one with funding, if he wants to do something a certain way then fair enough) - but everytime I voice an opinion independently, he disagrees, in front of the student.
I have given examples of these to some people who work in my field, and they've said they would've said they same, and they don't really understand why he's doing this.
To be clear, they're small things, I don't think it's a big deal as to whether we go with my opinion or his, but it's just the dynamic we're setting up that irritates me.
Alternative is to sit there like a lemon in meetings and not speak at all apart from to agree, but in that case I'm not sure why I'm there!
It's stressful because sometimes I meet with the student individually, and I'm second guessing myself when he asks reaonable questions as to whether I'm saying things that my boss will not be wanting me to.
Any advice? Obviously my priortity is to maintain a good working relationship with my boss, which has been fine until now. Oddly enough we've never run into this issue before when it comes to my work.