My Story

My goal is simple: To get the people around you to say, "Wow! ___________ (your name)'s team has been knocking it out of the park lately."

​Wouldn't that be great?   

​I believe better communication skills immediately change the world around us. I believe equipped leaders can help their teams reach higher levels of excellence. My vision is to make the world a better place by improving the way we interact one-on-one, the way we lead our teams and organizations, and the way we share our ideas with others. We spend most waking hours at work. Why not make our organizations inspiring places to work? Why not pour our best into the people right around us? We can't wait for the people around us to spontaneously improve their skills. It starts with you.  
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With these beliefs in mind, I decided 20 years go that I wanted to teach college AND do as much consulting, speaking, and as many training workshops as my schedule allowed. Since then, I've become a full-time college professor and a part-time consultant. Over the years, I've helped for several Fortune 500 companies and many local organizations. 

While my face-to-face work often involves large, well-funded companies, the travel is time consuming and takes me away from my family. Online, I hope to reach rising leaders--people like team leaders, supervisors, managers, etc.--who want to pursue their own professional development. These leaders supervise the vast majority of organizations' employees and a positive relationship with our immediate supervisor is the key factor in our overall satisfaction and success at work. My Youtube channel and this website are here to help us all sharpen your skills and take our games to the next level. 

I also wrote a book, Case Studies in Courageous Communication: Research and Practice for Effective Workplaces (2016, Peter Lang Publishing). Some organizations do a much better job than others at creating high-performance workplaces that are outstanding places to work. The book makes that path clearer for others to follow. I have also published original research in numerous peer-reviewed academic journals like Communication Monographs, Management Communication Quarterly, Journal of Applied Communication Research, and others. 

I earned a BA from Rhode Island College, an MA from California State University Northridge, and a Ph.D. from the University of Colorado, Boulder (2003); all are Communication degrees. I work at The College at Brockport, State University of New York where we host healthy undergraduate and graduate programs in Communication Studies. I specialize in the area of workplace communication or "organizational communication" as we call it.

Along the way, I  was blessed to get married and have a young son. I live an active Christian life and love God. My faith and my family come before all else mentioned here--as it should be--but they also drive my desire to change workplaces for the better. See my detailed testimony here. With the proceeds from my Youtube channel and business, I sponsor a child through Compassion International. Through your support, we provide Jose Alexander's (who I call "Little Alex" in my videos) education and mentoring through his local church in Guatemala. 

I hope you benefit from the resources on this site and my YouTube channel as much as I enjoy creating them.

​Sincerely, 
Alex Lyon