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Whereas most societal commentators continue to review the historical patterns of men’s leadership in search of models for 21st-century success, few have begun to recognize, let alone appreciate, the equivalent patterns of women’s leadership and the future contributions that women could potentially make as leaders. What could and are women bringing to society as global leaders? Why at this moment in history is there such a marked increase in the number of women leaders? Are we entering an era in which both male and female leaders will shape history, both symbolically and in reality? And if so, will we discover that women, on average, lead in different ways than men, or will we learn that role (global leader) explains more than gender? This chapter reveals the accelerating trends of women joining men in senior leadership positions, establishes the relationship of women leaders to our overall understanding of global leadership, and sets forth an agenda to accomplish much needed research and understanding.

In this interview, Dr. Nancy J. Adler describes her career trajectory, motivation, and the passion that have guided her interests and choices. Asking big questions that matter in her own research and encouraging others in the field of international management to do the same is one of her guiding principles. Dr. Adler details the startling career impact that resulted from her pioneering research on women who are global leaders in the 1990s. Given her groundbreaking research, her attempts to influence what scholars study and how they are evaluated, and her calls to action as a global consultant, speaker, and thought leader, she is one of academe's most well-known and respected global leaders.

Dr. Adler is the S. Bronfman Professor Emerita in Management at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. She is a graduate of the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), having received her BA in Economics, MBA, and PhD in Management. As one of the most widely cited international management scholars, she has authored more than 175 publications and received numerous teaching and research awards, including the Academy of Management's (AMLE) Outstanding Article Award and Decade Award and the Sage Award for Scholarly Contributions in Management. She is a Fellow of the Academy of International Business, the Academy of Management, and the International Academy of Management. In addition, she was honored as one of Canada's top university professors and inducted into the Royal Society of Canada.

Her work has also been widely recognized beyond academia. She received the Prix du Quebec, Doctor Honoris Causa from Slovenia's IEDC Bled, Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, Center for Creative Leadership's Applied Research Award, the World Federation of People Management Associations' Georges Petitpas Award, ASTD's International Leadership Award, SIETAR's Outstanding Senior Interculturalist Award, the International Leadership Association's Lifetime Achievement Award, and the YWCA's Femme de Mérite Award.

Although retired from the university setting after 40 years at McGill, Dr. Adler continues to consult and speak around the world. However, she now devotes more time to her art. She is a visual artist known for her paintings, monotype prints, and ceramic artworks. Her “Serendipity Suite” and “Reality in Translation: Art Transforming Apathy into Action” exhibitions were held at the Banff Centre, and her “Going Beyond the Dehydrated Language of Management” exhibition opened in Montreal in conjunction with the Academy of Management Meeting. Dr. Adler's artwork is held in private collections worldwide.

In this contribution, we systematically review the extant global leadership literature to identify important bibliometric and thematic patterns in evidence in this evolving field of scholarship. Conceptualizing the phenomenon to include leaders/managers/supervisors who hold global, expatriate, or international positions, we draw out insights accumulated from a total of 327 published articles in key management and organizational behavior journals listed in Scopus. Our analysis proceeds in two sequential phases. Our bibliometric analysis first identifies the most cited articles, most published first authors, country bases of first authors, and frequently publishing journals in this field. This characterizes both the diversity and innovative nature of scholarship in the field. Our thematic content analysis, generated through Nvivo 11, isolates two dominant overarching themes that represent the wellspring for the body of literature, namely global leader development and global leader effectiveness. These themes of development and effectiveness are further explicated through six distinct lenses namely cultural, cognitive, learning, personality trait, social/relational, and political. These lenses are underpinned by a suite of theoretical perspectives encompassing individual, system, and contextual considerations. In combination, these sets of analyses bring added systematics to the field and serve as a point of departure for future inquiry.

The chapters in Volume 15 of Advances in Global Leadership provide a comprehensive examination of the state of our field in its lenses on and through power. In this chapter, we synthesize the volume's insights around two main conclusions. First, global leadership research tends to draw on the same lenses and approaches to the study of power as the mainstream leadership research does. This is helpful for comparison and extension across contexts, but the research suggests that important insights – especially around the nature of power dynamics in highly complex environments – may be missed by limiting the perspective. Second, recent research on how global leaders work is beginning to show a pattern illuminating the importance of dynamic and shared power adaptation in global leadership. There are exciting possibilities in these directions, and this chapter concludes with a discussion on ideas for future research.