Meet Pete Hazzard
Tune yourself. Lead your team.
Most of what I know about leadership, I learned from the people sitting in front of me in a rehearsal hall.
Here’s the humbling thing about standing on a conductor’s podium: you don’t make a sound. Not one note. Every bit of music in that room comes from the players. My job is to help them hear each other, find a common pulse, and believe they can do more together than they could alone. I’ve come to think that’s what leadership is everywhere. If someone depends on you, you’re influencing them, and that makes you a leader, whether or not you have the title.
In 2001 I took my first job as a head band director. About seventy students had stuck with the program through a hard season, and they became the heart of everything that followed. I was young, overwhelmed, and in over my head. So I leaned on an old story about Nehemiah, who rebuilt a wall one section at a time alongside the people who were already there, and we started building together. Over the next few years, that band grew to more than 180 students, and in 2003 we performed at the Bands of America National Concert Band Festival in Indianapolis. I’m still grateful for those seventy who stayed. They taught me more than I taught them.
The Four Characteristics of Every Great Performance
What I learned in those years, mostly by getting things wrong first, became the framework I teach today. Great ensembles and great teams share four characteristics:
IN TONE. They start with a clear, characteristic sound. You can’t tune a bad sound.
IN TUNE. They align to a shared reference pitch, the WHY, through communication, coordination, and collaboration.
IN TIME. They live inside a shared pulse, and the leader sets the tempo.
IN TOUCH. They stop being just a team and become a tribe.
In my experience, most teams aren’t short on talent. They’re short on alignment. I love helping leaders find it.
From the Podium to the Page
I know how heavy leadership can get when you’re pouring into everyone and no one’s pouring into you. I’ve been there, and that’s why I do this work. I’ve tried to capture what I’ve learned in three books: Let’s Take It from the Top, Gotta Get Back IN TIME, and IN TONE Leadership. I also write the Leadership Wired blog, speak and lead training for schools, universities, and organizations, and host a small mastermind called The Conductor’s Circle.
Whether you’re a teacher, an administrator, a church leader, or anywhere in between, the goal is the same: to help you go from running on empty to leading from a full tank, with a team back in sync and a heart that still loves the work.
The People Who Shaped Me
I grew up in Euless, Texas, playing in the band at Trinity High School under Tom Neugent, who showed me what a band director could mean in a kid’s life. I studied conducting at Howard Payne University with Dr. Robert Tucker and Dr. Tom Webster, and earned my Master of Music in wind conducting at the University of North Texas in 2006, studying with Dennis Fisher and Eugene Migliaro Corporon.
Over about seventeen years as a Texas band director at Denton, Frisco, Creekview, and Liberty High Schools, I had the privilege of working with students who were named TMEA Honor Band state finalists several times, won the Mark of Excellence national title, and performed at the 65th Midwest Clinic in 2011. Those honors belong to them. Along the way, I’ve had the joy of conducting, teaching, composing and arranging, and supporting fine arts educators and the leaders who serve alongside them. Every one of those roles has taught me the same thing: the best work happens when people are aligned around something bigger than themselves.
Most importantly, my wife Whitney and I have raised three kids here in Texas: Caitlyn, Lauren, and Cameron. I’m one blessed man.
What I Keep Coming Back To
My father taught me to measure twice and cut once.
My teachers taught me that a legacy is something you leave in people, not just to them.
And on the podium and off it, I keep coming back to this: start where you are, use what you have, and bloom where you’re planted.
If I can help you and your team do that, I’d love to talk.