Meet Pete Hazzard
I learned leadership in the one room where it cannot be faked: the rehearsal hall. Stand on a conductor’s podium and you make no sound. Not one note. Everything that happens in that room happens because a group of talented people chose to perform together. That is the whole job. That is leadership. Leadership is influence, nothing more and nothing less. If anyone depends on you for any reason, you are a leader, because you influence them.
In 2001 I took my first job as a head band director and walked into a program in disarray. Morale was gone. About seventy students were left. I was young, overwhelmed, and honestly a little burned out before I had earned the right to be. So I went back to an old story about a man named Nehemiah, who was handed a broken wall and a discouraged people, and I started to rebuild, one section at a time. Over the next few years that program grew from about 70 students to more than 180, and by 2003 we were standing on the stage of the Bands of America National Concert Band Festival in Indianapolis.
The Four Characteristics of Every Great Performance
That experience became the framework I teach today. Great performances, and great teams, share four characteristics. They play IN TONE: they lead from a clear, characteristic sound, because you cannot tune a bad sound. They play IN TUNE: they align to a shared reference pitch, the WHY, through communication, coordination, and collaboration. They play IN TIME: they live inside a shared pulse, and the tempo is set by the leader. They play IN TOUCH: they stop being a team and become a TRIBE.
Most teams aren’t lacking talent. They are lacking alignment.
My work, on the page and on the platform, is helping leaders find it.
From the Podium to the Page
I put those lessons learned into three books: LET’S TAKE IT FROM THE TOP, Gotta Get Back IN TIME, and IN TONE Leadership. I write the Leadership Wired blog, I keynote and train for schools, universities, and companies, and I lead a mastermind called The Conductor’s Circle. The goal is always the same: to move leaders from burnout to alignment, and from reaction to intention.
The Credentials Were Earned on the Podium
I grew up in Euless, Texas, under a band director of my high school band director Tom Neugent at Trinity High School. I studied conducting at Howard Payne University with Dr. Robert Tucker and Dr. Tom Webster, and I earned my Master of Music in wind conducting from the University of North Texas in 2006, studying with Dennis Fisher and Eugene Migliaro Corporon. Across roughly seventeen years as a Texas band director, at Denton, Frisco, Creekview, and Liberty High Schools, my ensembles were named TMEA Honor Band state finalists multiple times, won the Mark of Excellence national title, and performed at the 65th Midwest Clinic in 2011.
Today I serve as Managing Director of Fine Arts for Frisco ISD, one of the largest districts in Texas, the instrumental music director at Stonebriar Community Church, and as Artistic Director of the Carrollton Wind Symphony. I am also a composer and arranger, with a catalog of published works for band, orchestra, and chamber ensembles in the Hal Leonard and Hazzard Publications calalogues.
My wife Whitney and I have raised three children here in Texas: Caitlyn, Lauren, and Cameron. Let me tell you - I am one blessed man!
The Creed
My father taught me to measure twice and cut once.
My former teachers taught me that a legacy is something you leave in people, not just to them.
And time and time again here is the line I keep coming back to, on the podium and off it: start where you are, use what you have, and bloom where you are planted.
If I can help you do that with your team, I would love to talk.