How do you work with a dissertation supervisor?
By treating it as a professional working relationship you are responsible for managing — which is the adjustment that separates students who finish comfortably from those who struggle, and it is rarely explained.
What a supervisor is for: guidance on scope and feasibility; pointing you towards literature and methods; feedback on drafts; keeping you to a realistic timetable; and knowing the assessment criteria and the pitfalls. They are not there to give you a topic, tell you what to argue, or edit your writing.
What they expect from you: initiative, preparation, and independence. A supervisor's time is limited and shared across several students, and how you use it is visible.
How to run the relationship well:
Agree expectations at the first meeting — how often you will meet, what notice they need for reading drafts, how long feedback takes, how to contact them, and what happens over holidays.
Send an agenda in advance, with specific questions rather than "here's my draft".
Send work ahead with enough time. Sending a chapter the night before is the most common complaint supervisors make, and produces worse feedback.
Write a short note after each meeting summarising what was agreed and by when, and send it to them. This costs five minutes and prevents most misunderstandings about what was advised.
Bring problems early. Supervisors are far more interested in a stalled project they can help with than in silence followed by a crisis.
Act on feedback, or explain why not. Repeatedly resubmitting work that ignores comments is the fastest way to lose goodwill.
Do not disappear. The students who struggle most are usually the ones who stopped attending because they felt behind — which makes it worse.
When it is not working: if the relationship has broken down, if supervision is not happening, or if expertise does not match the project, raise it with the programme or postgraduate lead. Requesting a change of supervisor is a normal administrative matter, not a betrayal, and institutions have processes for it.
Remember the work is yours. Approval of a draft is not a guarantee of a mark.