As Sheryl Sandberg noted in Lean In (see Page 63), too many women suffer from “The Tiara Syndrome.” Symptoms include keeping your head down, delivering excellent work and hoping that the right people will notice — and place a tiara on your head!

Although that can happen, it’s rare. Hope is not a strategy!

It’s naive to think that delivering excellent results are all that it takes to succeed in the workplace. The playing field is not yet equal for women; the fact is that women have to negotiate for things their male colleagues can often take for granted.

In addition to the obvious issue regarding compensation, women should negotiate for high visibility assignments, the resources they need to get the job done, support from those senior in the organization and buy-in from colleagues. They should also negotiate in their personal lives for the things that will enable them to be successful in the workplace.

Effective negotiation is a prerequisite to “leaning in”.

Garance Franke-Ruta, a senior editor at The Atlantic Magazine writes that despite more education, women still don’t make it to top leadership positions in numbers proportionate to their accomplishments in the workplace. Why? One reason is that the success factors at work are different that those at school. Still saddled with gender stereotypes as well as embedded workplace policies and practices that disadvantage women, the world of work is not a meritocracy. She notes that “The Tiara Syndrome”, a term we coined, can cause women to wait to wait for their contributions to be noticed and rewarded —and that it tends not to happen.

Another reason Franke-Ruta suggests may be a factor is her hypothesis that women apply habits from the dating realm to their careers. An interesting perspective — read the article .

Read Carol’s advice about how “The Tiara Syndrome ^SM“ hurts women and other career counsel from others including Hillary Clinton, Ursula Burns (Xerox’s CEO), Sheryl Sandberg (Facebook’s COO) and Gloria Steinen in the Washington Post. The Post’s piece makes the point that women often receive conflicting guidance, depending on who’s asked. When you think about it, that’s not surprising since the women offering the advice come from different backgrounds and have had different experiences. Watch out as she may also talk about BondCliff to help women out.