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The professional development of managers poses fundamental challenges that higher education is facing in these fast-changing times. These challenges include a lack of induction into managerial roles and responsibilities, conflicting roles and responsibilities and a lack of general skills pertaining to managerial positions. Experiencing these challenges necessitates the need for sustainable development programmes and practices within higher education institutions. To address this need, the purpose of this exploratory research was to develop a professional development needs analysis instrument as a reliable and valid instrument to determine the professional development needs of junior and mid-level academic managers. A gap analysis was conducted, involving 156 junior and mid-level academic managers at a university in South Africa. The construct validity of the instrument was determined through exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. To determine the reliability of the instrument, Cronbach alpha coefficients were calculated. The outcome of both the factor analysis and the Cronbach alpha coefficients indicated that the questionnaire was a valid and reliable measuring instrument that could be employed in future research to determine the professional development needs of academic managers. The implementation of the professional development needs analysis instrument may contribute to sustainable management activities at universities for junior and mid-level academic managers.