About Me
Michael is ACAMIS’s Leadership Development Facilitator, Search Associates Contracted HR PD Coordinator for China, and an affiliated Council of International School’s (CIS) consultant with the following areas of expertise:
✔︎ Appraisal and Professional Development
✔︎ School governance
✔︎ Leadership training
✔︎ Strategic planning
His journey in education began 20 years ago as a research assistant at Arizona State University’s Child Development Laboratory, where he was an early years educator and researcher. Since moving to China in 1999, originally as an Early Years Teacher, Michael has advised and trained the Boards and Leadership of hundreds of International Schools across Asia. His work has helped small and large schools facilitate real strategic planning, develop leadership across the school, implement best practices for human resource management, and design staff capacity-building programs for both academic and non-academic staff.
Michael’s first book, Hidden in Plain Site: Realizing the Full Potential of Middle Leaders, is the foundation for all his leadership development work. Since writing this book he launched www.middleleader.com where he is regularly posting articles on school leadership and interviews with school leadership influencers.
Michael Iannini’s long tenure with ACAMIS, and recent partnership with Search Associates, have been attributed to his extensive experience in the Chinese International Education Market and stewardship of their respective members. Michael’s success has repeatedly been attributed to:
the considerable amount of time he devotes to every project to ensure its success
consistent engagement with project stakeholders to understand their needs and address their concerns
his ability to adapt and guide stakeholders through complex and constantly shifting environments, and
his genuine desire to see every school realize their expected project outcomes, no matter the cost to himself.
“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. I would also like to commend Michael on being very accommodating and flexible throughout this process.”
“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
What people are saying.
Listen to YCYW’s experience in developing a mentoring culture at their schools.
“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.”
— Dr. Helen Kelly, Lower School Principal at Canadian International School of 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.”
— Emmanuel Bonin, Deputy Head of School at Shanghai American 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
“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.”
— Adam McGuigan, Acting Head of School at International College Hong Kong
“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
— Winson Coe, Learning Support Teacher, SJI International
Book an appointment with Michael
Need help with your school’s middle leadership?
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My book study for Hidden in Plain Sight: Realizing the Full Potential of Middle Leaders ensures you not only identify practical steps you can take to develop yourself as a leader but ensure that you are engaging with peers and senior leaders throughout the course of this program.