“Michael’s expertise has contributed immensely to the building of an effective Board. He has been instrumental in the development of a sustainable HOS performance evaluation process, building upon the benchmark evaluators of his Success Profile Analysis, and has facilitated our Board review and training, bringing governors together for an annual reflection and deep dive into the work for the year and driving strategic direction for the year ahead.”

— Edward Lau - Board Chair & Derek Pinchbeck - Head of School, International College Hong Kong

I can categorically say that whatever Michael promised, he delivered in terms of outcomes. He spent considerable time getting to know our school and was very giving of his time and energy when we sought his help and advice during the process. I felt that Michael genuinely wanted to see us be successful in this process and that he was very invested personally in both the process and the outcome.

As a presenter, Michael is outstanding. He is highly energetic, speaks with great knowledge of the content, is confident and engaging. Michael sought feedback from participants after each training day through a survey, and the feedback was extremely positive. A number of staff members also told me personally that they had learned a lot by participating in the process and that they also enjoyed working with Michael.

(Click here to read the full recommendation letter.)

— Damien Hehir, Co-Principal (Head of School), Yew Chung International School of Shanghai, Pudong

Michael initially began working with our academic middle leaders: a newly formed group of Heads of Faculty. He helped them facilitate a number of sessions based on leading their teams in the ISF context, focusing on identifying team norms, communication preferences and managing difficult conversations. In addition, Michael facilitated a session at the beginning of the 2018-19 academic year which brought together the full middle and senior leadership teams from Secondary school. In all my dealings with Michael, he has been professional and focused on our unique educational environment, and he has developed his courses around our own strategic goals. In his session, he has been respectful and adaptable to the needs of the group.

(Click here to read the full recommendation letter.)

— Nicholas Forde, Secondary Principal, Independent Schools Foundation Academy

We selected Michael as he was able to demonstrate that, in addition to his technical expertise, he had the personal attributes to engage our team and bring out their best. The consensus of our team was that the successful outcome derived from Michael’s careful pre-analysis, including perceptive interviews of the participants before the program commenced, and an uncommon ability by anecdotal good humor to draw out everybody’s opinions, encouraging interactive discussion and create a sense of common ownership.

(Click here to read the full recommendation letter.)

— John Patrick Baskett, Chairman, The J.S.P. Schools Association

Mike has worked with us on a consultancy basis at CDNIS for the last two years. He has delivered training to our Lower School Learning Leader Team. In the first year this training focused mainly on leadership theory and building healthy team dynamics. In the second year it has focused more closely on change leadership and has contained an element of coaching in triad groups.

The training has been very successful and has enabled our middle leaders, some of whom are fairly inexperienced, to develop a wider understanding of the leadership role and be provided with tools to scaffold their leadership journey.

(Click here to read the full recommendation letter.)

— Dr. Helen Kelly, Lower School Principal, Canadian International School of Hong Kong

For the last 9 years I have been a teacher, however, in the beginning of August 2016, I moved to China and walked into a brand new job as a facilities manager. I had the normal worries about starting a job that I was clearly not trained for and in the first week I spent much of my time running around as fast as I could, putting out fires in a school which was about to start its new academic year. Fortunately for me and my staff, my school had arranged a training for us with Luca Mantovani. After about 10 days of working at the school and running myself ragged, we had a several day training with Luca.

During this training, Luca took my team and I from the very basics of the profession and walked us through all the steps to effective leadership, organization, responsibilities, and a number of other practical matters of the occupation. The scope of our jobs were explained and we began to visualize real-world next steps for ourselves. Our training days started with well prepared, classroom-style talks with strong visual presentations and ended with walks around our school. During these facility walks, Luca exposed and discussed possible risk areas, hot spots, areas which were not set up effectively, areas which would present problems in the future, and a number of other points of interest. This lecture and facility exploration approach worked in tandem to bring the philosophy and practical applications that Luca was exposing to into clear focus.

After the training, me and my team were left with very strong goals to bring our school’s facilities department up to speed. That was seven months ago and in the time since that training, Luca has contacted me several times to check in on our goals, gave helpful feedback on new departmental forms that I had written, and, just recently, explained how the smoke detectors work always giving overall positive support in any way he was able. In short, working with Luca has allowed my team and I to make our facilities department the best it has been in the six years of its young existence. He is always available for advice and direction even after his trainings. He is a true professional and would be able to benefit any FM, regardless of their years of expertise with his refreshing, nonjudgmental approach.

— Chris Borodenko, Qingdao Amerasia International School

I would like to convey my thanks to you for an excellent few days of training at YCIS Beijing. This is the very first time in all my years in education that school administrators have actively provided training for primary leaders in such a way. Effective leaders and leadership ensures our school runs well and that the staff have confidence in their leaders at all levels. For me, providing this training is a very positive step as it gives our leaders the message that we are serious about the role they play and up skills them to carry out their duties with confidence. Leaders need to be developed at all levels and for our Year Leaders and Secondary Heads this is the first step, so providing strategies for them to build on is crucial in developing them, not just for now, but for future leadership roles that will see them move into more demanding administrative roles.

— Jennifer Mills, Primary Curriculum Coordinator, Yew Chung International School of Beijing

Michael helped us to understand each parties governing responsibilities and facilitated discussions to focus our work for the coming year, which would be to begin a formal recruitment process for a new Head of School…and this led to the school contracting Michael to design and facilitate our international recruitment process for the new Head of School.

(Click here to read the full recommendation letter.)

— John Wilson, Chairman of Board of Governor, International College Hong Kong – Hong Lok Yuen

Just a note to say that I have read your newsletter regularly since I was added to your mailing list and I always find your advice timely and valuable. When I read that you were offering a coaching session this week I couldn’t help but think that the opportunity was a godsend. After a constant barrage of decisions  that my team and I were making on a daily basis during this crisis, I had a problem come across my desk that stretched the limit of my training, experience and problem solving ability. 

It was extremely helpful to have a knowledgeable, neutral, logical peer to bounce off ideas, distill the important points and provide perspective on the issue. I shared the key points that I took away from the conversation with our management and it immediately reopened a stalled conversation and gave us several new paths to consider. 

I am very grateful for your willingness to give of your time in this way during this important shift in our world.

— Dan Waterman, Head of School, Access International Academy Ningbo

Having been in a couple of these types of workshops in the past, I personally found Michael’s workshop to be the most beneficial. Michael understood the school’s current position and guided discussions towards clear, actionable items. His workshop was not generic – it felt it was tailor-made for us. All participants walked away with new information and specific tasks needed for our school to grow.

Michael was also approachable beyond his main brief. Michael was happy to share his advice weeks before the workshop about particular queries that were not applicable to the actual workshop. This was much appreciated by all the board members. He continues to provide advice to this day.

(Click here to read the full recommendation letter.)

— Adam McGuigan, Acting Head of School, International College Hong Kong

Between 2016 and 2018, Michael and I worked on improving the professional development offering for our support staff, by making it more strategic, fair and equitable. Michael developed a needs analysis tool that provided baseline data and allowed to strategize optimal use of our funding to best support a larger number of our support staff, in a more strategic manner. Michael involved himself deeply in the project, spending several days a month in Shanghai over the course of 9 months to administer the needs analysis, train our managers and support them in the development of PD opportunities for their staff, and also develop such opportunities himself with his team at PDAcademia. His contribution to our school has been very beneficial.

(Click here to read the full recommendation letter.)

— Emmanuel Bonin, Deputy Head of School, Shanghai American School

Michael’s work with our Board has empowered us to take positive, purposeful actions in the areas that are likely to generate the greatest return on investment in terms of improving Board performance.

(Click here to read the full recommendation letter.)

— Andrew Brandler, Chairman, Chinese International School

The workshop went off as planned. Much of the success, I believe, was due to the large amount of planning Mr. Iannini completed, including contacting all Board Members prior to the retreat to fill in a personality inventory to use at the meeting, and meeting them all over Skype to get to know them and to find out what they specifically were looking to get out of the retreat. This personal touch was particularly helpful as we only had a limited time, and the effectiveness of this was evident in how we immediately got into the agenda without having to spend time getting to know each other.

(Click here to read the full recommendation letter.)

— Dr. Gwyn Underwood, Superintendent, Cebu International School

I wanted you to know that yesterday I had a meeting with an EAL Teacher who was having conflict collaborating with a content teacher. I used the “Quick Guide to Probing Questions” as a scaffold for that conversation, even making it clear to the teacher that I was practicing using some tools I had recently learned at a conference. As she discussed her perspective, I found asking the question “What is the best outcome in this situation?” to be a great way to focus our conversation.

Thanks again for your support!

— Maja Flom, Nansha College Preparatory Academy

I just wanted to touch base and say thank you for your time and expertise.  I have been surprised and pleased at how well the “let’s set the agenda for the next meeting” is going.  That opened up quick discussion and paved the way for a future productive meeting…I have had 1:1 meetings with the team (and) got them to fill in the Team sheet you sent and I also emphasised that a team needs a variety of skill sets, which allayed initial fears. I told them there would be another meeting in August and how good it was to have 20 minutes of uninterrupted, dedicated time.  

— Suzanne Sinclair, Australian International School of Hong Kong