Why Safety Professionals Should Take Ownership of Their Own Career Path

Most safety and risk professionals are technically capable, trusted, and used to carrying responsibility for other people’s wellbeing. What they’re often not doing is applying that same rigour to their own career. That’s the argument at the centre of a recent conversation between Christian Harris and career coach Paul Goodreau, a former hydrogeologist who built a career from technical specialist to CEO, and now helps professionals think more deliberately about where their career is actually going.

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Your career isn’t managing itself, even if it feels that way

If you’ve spent years building technical expertise in safety, risk or health and safety, you’ll recognise the pattern. You get qualified. You take on more responsibility. You get good at the job. And somewhere in that process, thinking strategically about your own career tends to slip down the list, because you’re busy looking after everyone else’s risk.

Paul Goodreau knows this world from the inside. He started as a hydrogeologist, worked his way through project management and business development, and eventually became a global account manager and CEO before retiring to write and coach. His central message is simple: nobody else is going to build your career for you, and safety professionals, in particular, are often better positioned for leadership than they realise.

Your career aspiration isn’t fixed, and that’s fine

One of Paul’s clearest points is that people often assume their career should follow a straight line from their first qualification. It doesn’t, and it shouldn’t.

He explained that most people start out following the technical path their industry demands, then their priorities shift as life changes. “It’s perfectly fine to change your career aspiration with time,” he said. “You don’t need to be a hydrogeologist for 40-five years.”

The practical takeaway is to treat your career aspiration as something you revisit, not something you set once and follow blindly.

Safety professionals are strong candidates for leadership roles

Christian raised a point worth sitting with if you’re in a technical safety role and assume leadership isn’t for you. He suggested that people with a technical grounding in safety and risk management should be prime candidates for CEO roles, given how much of the job involves understanding how a business works, influencing people, and reading data.

Paul agreed, with a caveat. In smaller, professional services firms, technical credibility can be exactly what gets you in the room. He gave his own experience as an example: “I was invited to client meetings because I was a hydrogeologist, not because I was CEO.” His point was that intimacy with the actual service you provide, not just a management title, is often what moves a career forward in that kind of organisation.

Build an advisory team, deliberately

A recurring theme was the value of having people around you who can see opportunities you can’t see for yourself. Paul distinguishes between a coach, who helps you perform better in your current role, and a mentor, who helps you evaluate future roles and options.

His advice for approaching a mentor was direct: find someone you genuinely regard, often outside your own organisation, and ask to meet with them regularly. He noted that internal mentors have limited incentive to point you toward opportunities elsewhere, which is why an external perspective matters. As he put it, “very rarely are people going to say no to helping you.”

Use a simple model to work out where you are

Paul’s career life cycle model, which he calls ADAPT, breaks a career into five stages: Acquire, Develop, Apply, Produce, and Transition. Acquire covers early technical or academic grounding. Develop is your first real job, where you learn how to work within an organisation. Apply is where you find an industry, employer and role that genuinely fit. Produce is where most people are actively achieving their career goals. Transition is the point where you choose to retire or reinvent yourself, as Paul did when he moved from hydrogeologist to author and coach.

He estimates that roughly 80% of people follow some version of this cycle, and that it isn’t strictly linear. You can move back to an earlier stage at any point. The value of the model isn’t prediction. It’s giving you a way to work out roughly where you are, and what a sensible next step might look like.

Don’t confuse a busy career with a deliberate one

Perhaps the most useful challenge in the conversation was Paul’s point that a title or salary can look like progress while masking a career that’s actually just running on autopilot. He recommends reviewing three things regularly: whether you’re in the right industry, whether you’re with the right company, and whether your current role still serves your longer-term goals.

He was equally clear that a role itself matters less than people assume, because roles change constantly. What matters more is checking in on the bigger picture. His advice was to review your career aspiration at least annually, and assess quarterly whether you’re still on track.

What to do if you’re feeling stuck

For anyone recognising themselves in this article, Paul’s practical starting point is short: confirm you’re in the right industry, confirm you’re with the right company, write down your career aspiration, and find a mentor as soon as possible. It’s not a complicated process. It just requires setting aside the time most people don’t naturally make for it.

Pull quotes

“It’s perfectly fine to change your career aspiration with time. You don’t need to be a hydrogeologist for 40-five years.”
— Paul Goodreau

“I was invited to client meetings because I was a hydrogeologist, not because I was CEO.”
— Paul Goodreau

“Very rarely are people going to say no to helping you.”
— Paul Goodreau

Show Notes

Episode summary:
Christian Harris speaks with Paul Goodreau, a former hydrogeologist turned CEO, author and career coach, about why so many technically capable professionals leave their career progression to chance. The conversation covers Paul’s own career path from technical specialist to global account manager and CEO, his ADAPT career life cycle model, the difference between a coach and a mentor, and why safety and risk professionals are often better positioned for leadership roles than they assume. They also discuss how AI is changing entry-level work in technical industries and what that means for building a career going forward.

Guest bio:
Paul Goodreau is a former hydrogeologist who built a career through project management, business development and executive leadership, and is now the author of Own Your Career, No One Else Will and Own the Life You Deserve.

Key moments:

• Paul’s path from hydrogeologist to CEO, and why he moved from technical work into business development
• Why career aspirations change over time, and why that’s normal
• The case for safety professionals as strong leadership candidates
• The difference between a coach and a mentor, and how to approach a potential mentor
• The ADAPT career life cycle model explained
• How AI is reshaping entry-level roles in technical industries

Links and resources mentioned:

• Own Your Career, No One Else Will by Paul Goodreau
• Own the Life You Deserve by Paul Goodreau
• Paul Goodreau’s career life assessment: ownthelifeyoudeserve.com
• paulgoodreau.com
• Paul Goodreau on LinkedIn

Next step

If this conversation has you thinking about how deliberately you’re managing your own career, it’s worth applying the same honesty to how you manage risk on your sites. The Slip Risk Scorecard takes a few minutes and gives you a clear view of where your grip currently stands.

Internal link suggestions

• Link to the Scorecard tool: Check where your organisation stands with the Slip Risk Scorecard
• Link to Slipology by Christian Harris: Read the full method behind measure, improve, prove