This paper considers the role of emotion in the day-to-day work of academics involved in higher education (henceforth HE). Taking as its starting point a recent Staff and Educational Development Association (SEDA) publication entitled 'The emotionally intelligent lecturer' (Mortiboys 2002), the paper centrally examines two questions. Firstly, what does the concept of emotional intelligence (henceforth EI) reveal about the character of work of HE academics? Secondly, to what extent might it be desirable to use the concept of EI as a guiding framework for the development of HE lecturing staff and their teaching practices? The paper thus explores issues relating to skill development within HE academia, and, more broadly, the emotional dimension to academic work. The core argument presented here is that the prospect of the 'EI lecturer' serves to highlight and dispel a prevailing myth within Western academia that is here termed the 'myth of dispassionate exchange'. Through recourse to a number of empirical examples it is proposed that while this myth is routinely performed in the everyday work of HE academics - including such practices as peer review, assignment marking, and research seminars - it belies and obfuscates a profoundly emotional level to academic exchange. From an EI perspective our capacity to recognise, manage, and negotiate this emotional level relates to a set of hitherto under-recognised 'competencies', a range of inter- and intra- personal skills, that, according to the EI rubric, can be developed with appropriate guidance and personal investment. It is argued here, however, that while the EI perspective has considerable utility in challenging the prevailing dispassionate exchange myth, and indeed, in drawing our attention to the emotional dimension to academic work, caution should be noted over its potential as a developmental framework for academics in the HE sector. The EI perspective, it is contended, actually highlights demands for emotional labour (Hochschild 1983) as central components of academic work; and moreover, the prospect of the 'emotionally intelligent lecturer' in fact constitutes an extension of these. That is to say, in presenting models of 'appropriate' and 'intelligent' behaviour, EI champions particular modes of emotionality and reflexivity which might, paradoxically, constitute an intensification of demands for emotional labour rather than constituting an escape from these.Hochschild, A. R. (1983) The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. California: University of California Press.Mortiboys, A. (2002) The Emotionally Intelligent Lecturer, Birmingham: Staff and Educational Development Association.