As the impact of automation and AI increases, workers' soft skills will become increasingly valuable and important - read this quick article from MITSloan Management Review.
My thoughts:
Communication methods taught in school largely focus on relaying and repeating information, not on persuading others or building buy-in/collaboration/emotion. Some informative articles are already being automated - and presentations aren't far behind.
That's why Corporate Storytelling is critical to the future way of working - it includes the perspective, creativity, and emotion needed to engage other human beings.
Effective communication training and development must explicitly include skills for audience empathy / engagement. That's hard to do in online or micro-training. It has to be baked into the learning experience itself.
This is critical because if presenters in your organization were to speak to their colleagues and customers like they do to voice assistants like Siri and Alexa... they would have a revolt on their hands. But we are unintentionally training people to do exactly that.
Think that's silly? Listen to the way many kids bark demands at their devices.
We have to do better. The way organizations develop their teams and foster behaviors is part of the solution.