The purpose of this paper is to examine whether a link between romance of leadership and leader emergence exists. To test this proposition, a sample population was drawn from a military leadership development program for senior enlisted personnel. The school\u27s 406 students were broken into 28 separate groupings called flights , each led by an instructor. The data for this study was obtained by administering the Romance of Leadership Scale (RLS) and observing leader emergence within the individual flights over a six-week period. The hypothesis that individuals who exhibit a high romance of leadership will be more likely to emerge as a leader was supported (p \u3c .05) in the case of peer ratings. The assertion that locus of control will moderate the relationship between romance of leadership and leader emergence received strong support in the case of instructor ratings (p \u3c .001) and partial support in the case of peer ratings (p \u3c .06)
