Most research and scholarship in the field of educational leadership and management seems focused on leaders and managers and their perspectives, while the perspective of an entire constituency--"the led"--is generally overlooked and neglected. This article contributes towards redressing this imbalance. Located within the context of the higher education sector, it presents findings from one phase of a funded study whose purpose was to examine what non-professorial academics, researchers and teachers employed in British universities think of the academic leadership provided by their professorial colleagues. From data generated by over 1200 questionnaire responses, a wide range of views emerged on what professors should be doing in order to fulfil their leadership roles, and how effectively they are doing it. A key finding was that, whilst most respondents agreed that professors should be providing academic leadership to junior colleagues--typically, as mentors or advisors--more than half of the sample reported that they were not receiving the help and advice that they wanted or needed.