With many baby boomers preparing to retire, higher education is facing an anticipated shortage of academic administrators. Compounding this challenge, many mid-career faculty are reluctant to fill these important positions, concerned that academic leadership is incompatible with work-life balance, that it detracts from their commitments to research and teaching, and that it is tantamount to "going to the dark side." Further, administrative roles have become more complex over the past decade due to increased regulatory requirements and budget constraints. To address this emerging problem, the authors conducted a study of factors that support and impede the development of academic leaders in order to identify effective practices. The context for this study was a large public land-grant research university that has a long-standing program of leadership development serving both academic administrators and faculty. At the time, the institution was engaged in a five-year NSF ADVANCE grant to promote the advancement of women and under-represented groups in the STEM fields, which primed it for this work. The research team, working in pairs, interviewed 19 unit administrators--primarily department chairs identified by associate provosts and deans as "academic leaders who are highly effective in identifying, cultivating and nurturing faculty to pursue academic leadership." They also interviewed 16 faculty identified by deans as "tenure-system mid-career faculty who have indicated an interest in academic leadership and/or have agreed to take on informal leadership roles." This article provides a summary of the findings. Additional resources are provided.