This article is intended to provoke thought and discussion about what it takes to be a department chair and what it feels like to be a department chair. To accomplish our purpose, we draw an analogy between test pilots and department chairs based on Tom Wolfe's "The Right Stuff" (1979). We reason that test pilots and department chairs should share certain qualities, or what Wolfe calls "the right stuff," to carry out their respective missions. Chief among those qualities are leadership, trust, fairness, an ability to build consensus, a positive attitude, and clear communication. In making our case, we contrast academic leadership, or "piloting," with academic management, or "being a passenger in," the academic enterprise. The article is based on our collective administrative experience chairing a variety of academic departments in parks, recreation, and tourism, as well as the administrative experience of several generations of our colleagues, who, for the good of the order, have taken a turn at the controls.