The university's environment today is very challenging and demanding due to changes in policies and the increasing standard and expectation of education in Malaysia. On top of that, the academic staffs especially lecturers, not only need to focus on teaching but also to embark on research and consultancy. Due to these pressures, it is important to explore the emotional intelligence of academic staff to identify their capabilities as they are the main resources of the university in producing better and highly qualified graduates. The institutions of higher learning have been looking for an educational environment with highly effective academic lecturers. Considering the important role of emotional intelligence in determining the performance of professionals in organizations and the need for enhancing academic performance in term of teaching activities and research & scholarly activities effectiveness in the classroom, this study intends to describe the factors that determine the relationship between emotional intelligence and the academic performance of academic staff in private educational institutions in Malaysia. This study highlighted four important dimensions in emotional intelligence, including self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management, based on research problems. Furthermore, academic performance (research and scholarly activities, as well as teaching activities) was combined with emotional intelligence in this study. In order to satisfy the study objectives, four key hypotheses were developed. To analyse the association between emotional intelligence dimensions and academic performance, hypotheses tested. Descriptive statistics, as well as correlation and multiple regression analysis, are used to assess academic performance. This research applied a quantitative method approach to cast the researchers' net wider to include selected higher educational institutions to obtain as much data as possible. The results demonstrate a significant relationship between various factors of emotional intelligence and academic performance of academic workers in private higher educational institutions. Therefore, these significant findings shed further light on the theoretical and practical utility of the construct of emotional intelligence and academic performance and have proven the fact that emotional intelligence is accountable for and could predict academic performance. This study will help