By James Knight.

Covid has brought many business skills to the surface, through no face-to-face meetings and Zoom being seen as the cure for everything, business etiquette in many instances has gone out of the window.

I am not knocking Zoom, because if Covid had arrived in the 80s how would we have functioned? But there needs to be a balance.

I feel we are losing face-to-face communications where reactions and how we act in a room matter. It will come back, but to paraphrase Dr McCoy: 'not as we know it Jim'.

I have gone on about presentation skills in Britain for years, or rather, in many cases, the lack of them.

I have sat through many university presentations, group and individual, using PowerPoint with two words on slides, no synergy and just reading through scripts without humour and no prompts, plus lecturers who could not present for a cheque for a million.

In the States, where I was trained, you had to present and engage, work the room, looking for eye contact, young kids are taught this, it is taught as an art.

Spontaneous business decisions can be made through inter-active presentations and working the room.

I feel that we have also lost business etiquette, returning calls and respecting people, in the Southern States of America good etiquette is paramount and if you work in the Middle Eastern countries respect counts and addressing people.

As a footnote I use to present in Vegas at leading trade shows, also on the University circuit, for 11 years where if you could not present you were not asked back, some of the presenters had the audience eating out of their hands, it was a honour to spend 11 years at the top table of presenters.

Professor James Knight is an international businessman, public relations practitioners and academic. He was Fellow of Bournemouth University Public Relations School, guest speaker at Judge Cambridge, Surrey, Bath and Reading, International Mentor for Oxford Brookes on Hospitality. He is a Fellow of CIPR and the Society of Public Relations of America, as well as a fellow of the Institute of Directors.