Being Human: Laura Schofield

We speak to five landscape professionals, asking them what ‘human’ skill they best add to projects, where they see skills gaps and what they didn’t learn in their training – but now recognise as vital…

Laura Schofield is a Landscape Manager and an Associate Director at TEP. She co-manages the Land Management team and works on a range of projects including green infrastructure and open space assessments, landscape and habitat management plans and heritage parks projects.

Energy, positivity and passion are three of the most human skills I add to any project I work on. And my ability to communicate – about what we’re doing; what I’m doing; what needs doing. My honesty and reliability ... they’re the skills that make a difference in the work I do.

As a profession, I think we still have a skills gap around communication – both verbal and written. Are we really communicating the benefits and advantages of projects to clients and communities effectively? Part of this lies in our capacity to influence projects – knowing when and how to present an argument for or against something on a project, but also in management situations.

We’re not yet confident enough in what we do; either our individual self-promotion as practitioners or promoting the profession and the role we play. That also has an impact on our collaboration skills; our understanding of, and ability to work with, others, including different professional disciplines.

There is so much more requirement to manage people than I ever considered in this career. It wasn’t something I considered when I decided to study landscape architecture. It was the technical side of landscape architecture that appealed to me – the environment, design and the science. But I’ve realised that the ‘people’ or human skills are vital to being a landscape professional and having a successful and fulfilling career – whether that’s managing a team, projects, clients or stakeholders.

Human skills build your resilience and help shape the way you behave in situations, in a way that technical knowledge doesn’t.

If we’re to attract the next generation of landscape professionals we need to emphasise the impact we can have. We need to be bold in demonstrating the scope to create change and our ability to make a difference: to collaborate; to focus on sustainability and the environment. We need to shout about what we do and let future landscape architects know how ambitious we are about what we can achieve for the profession.