He's retired now, but he never has been a senior minister.

I have great sympathy for my minister friend. Just like him, I've been a second fiddle, a second banana, a vice president, second in command most of my life.

It started in grammar school when I was class vice president and has continued until this day. I have been a student body vice president, second in command of a nonprofit organization, an assistant city editor, wire editor (but never an editor) and the No. 2 person on too many committees, boards and associations.

And I am not alone. That's been the life story of a good many people. Not many of us rise to command. We do well if we rise to the level of our own competence. Indeed, as one of Murphy's or somebody's laws has it, most of us rise to one level above our competence.

That's why we don't come out on top, ever, or hardly ever.

Our competence becomes evident all too soon in life and we plod along taking orders from someone else. If we're lucky we get along with whomever is above us. If we're unlucky we suffer being stepped on and ordered about by No. 1 (or sometimes No. 2 or No. 3).

I write all of this with some bitterness, I must confess, but also with some understanding of what it's like to be no higher than second in command. The few times I have found myself temporarily in charge of an organization, I've suffered the pangs of uncertainty and a certain lack of faith in my abilities.

One of these times I was the volunteer chief officer of a nonprofit agency. The president didn't get paid, but he or she got all the headaches and little of the perks. Or at least that's the way it seemed to me.

Midway in my term the two principal paid officers quit, leaving the agency to flounder until we could find new personnel. They did it without warning and without much grace. I like to think they quit for reasons other than that I was in charge, but it did give me reason to think I might not be the best person to be president.

If I had really been on top of things, I would have foreseen they were both about to quit, but, of course, I didn't. So, my confidence compromised, I decided I'd never again try to be a top banana. And, for better or worse, I never have.

My self-analysis convinced me I wasn't cut out to command.

The successful top dog, or so it seems to me, anyway, doesn't worry about what it is like to be in charge of things. He or she—and I had a woman for a boss for 11 years, so I've worked for both sexes—isn't thinking about how competent or incompetent they are. The boss is thinking instead about how he or she is going to run things to get a goal achieved, a task completed, a victory won.

And he or she probably isn't contemplating failure. If he or she were, they shouldn't be in charge.

So most bosses like to command, and I don't really begrudge them that. Obviously, I don't do well on my own. So while I am not exactly happy being a second fiddle, I do know my place. I'm not good at command and I do work with commanders.

But there are a couple of things I'd also like to tell them—but never have.

The first is that just because you're boss doesn't mean you should forget what it is like to be something less. To put this another way: be nice to those around you on the way up because you may well meet them again on the way down.

The good boss is one who realizes most of those beneath him or her are not a threat to power. Rather, properly appreciated, underlings can help a great deal to get the job done. Graciousness in command is as valuable as confidence.

The second thing about being second in command (or even third or fourth) is that the top of the mountain is not always a happy place to be. Uneasy is the head that wears the crown and all that sort of thing.

The good commander knows this and figures a way to sift the important messages from the chronic complainers, to know who is really doing the job and who is just getting by and, perhaps most important of all, who is trying to unseat the guy at the top of the heap so he or she can take over.

So if you're No. 2, don't sweat it. You could well suddenly become No. 1. Or as another cliché goes:

Don't want something too much, you may get it.

And after you get it, you may not want it after all.

Carl Heintze is a frequent contributor to the Willow Glen Resident.