At the Washington Post, our hope is that On Leadership will serve as an open and lively forum for a discussion of what makes for great leadership. Over the years, there have been many books written on the subject, and there are now a good number of academic programs and consulting firms that study and teach it. The world is also full of successful leaders who have developed their own sense of what works and what doesn’t. Our aim is to tap into that knowledge and experience and apply it, in real time, to an online conversation about real-world developments.

President Obama announced Friday morning that he has picked Jim Yong Kim, the president of Dartmouth College, to lead the World Bank. His nomination of Kim comes a month after current head Robert Zoellick said he would be stepping down.

Kim is the first Asian American to serve as an Ivy League college president. He is also a public health leader whose “innovative work fighting the spread of AIDS and tuberculosis” caught the president’s attention.

While president of Dartmouth, Kim sat down for a video interview with the Washington Post about his leadership style and the lessons he has learned from his work in public health.

This piece is the sixth installment in a six-part series on leadership character by West Point’s Col. Eric Kail.

Some say experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want. Perhaps. But I say experience is only as valuable as what we do with it.

Gaining wisdom from an experience requires reflection. In thinking back on the significant events of my life, experiences good and bad, it was the act of assigning meaning that has made all the difference for me. Reflection requires a type of introspection that goes beyond merely thinking, talking or complaining about our experiences. It is an effort to understand how the events of our life shape the way in which we see the world, ourselves and others. And it is essential for any leader.

(Barry Wetcher - BARRY WETCHER) This week we published the article “How to completely, utterly destroy an employee’s work life,” by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer. In no time, your workplace horror stories came flooding into the comments section.

Chilean miners attend the Smithsonian’s exhibit Against All Odds: Rescue at the Chilean Mine.Live in the Washington area and interested in all things leadership? On Thursday, February 23, you can join On Leadership at the National Museum of Natural History for a special event exploring America’s role in the Chilean mine rescue.

The panel discussion is the second in a series of leadership seminars being held in conjunction with the Smithsonian’s special exhibit Against All Odds: Rescue at the Chilean Mine . Michael Useem, director of the Wharton School’s Leadership Center at the University of Pennsylvania and longtime contributor to the Washington Post’s On Leadership section, will moderate the discussion. He will be joined on the panel by Ed Breiner of Schramm and Brandon W. Fisher and Richard Soppe of Center Rock — the two companies that created the drilling system that led to the rescue of 33 miners. The panel will also feature Dr. Michael Duncan of NASA, which helped design the rescue capsule and provided support during the operation, and a representative from the Embassy of Chile.