Leadership today is no longer simply about giving instructions and expecting people to follow. It is about persuasion and trust — the ability to convince your boss, your peers, your team, your clients and others to believe in an idea and move in the same direction. For women leaders, there is an additional balancing act: How can you appear confident without being perceived as intimidating? How do you demonstrate expertise without sounding arrogant? How do you become visible without appearing to be self-promoting?

These questions framed a recent session of the Filipina CEO Circle (FCC), the premier network organization for corporate female leaders in the Philippines, which counts about 80 lady executive members and is led by president Patricia May Siy. The stakes are real even in a country that already performs well on this front: the Philippines consistently ranks among the highest in the world for women's share of senior management positions, according to Grant Thornton's annual Women in Business surveys. The FCC invited Jorg Dietzel, author of The Next Big Asian Brands, as its guest speaker to discuss the importance of personal branding. Mr. Dietzel is a brand consultant by profession; his book examines what it takes for Asian companies to build brands that succeed beyond their home markets — a corporate question he brought down to the personal level for the FCC's members.

A brand, according to Mr. Dietzel, is not simply a logo. It is the expectation people have before they meet you and the memory they keep afterward.

Today, people often Google you before they meet you. They already form an initial impression from your LinkedIn profile, your social media presence, an article you wrote, or even something someone else has said about you. But personal brands go far beyond what appears online. A brand is reflected in every e-mail, every conversation, every meeting and presentation, and in how well you do your job. Are you simply passing information along and acting like a mailbox? Or do you pre-process information, think critically, add value and help solve problems? As Mr. Dietzel pointed out, a personal brand is not something you create. Rather, it is revealed and reinforced through consistent action.

He presented a set of important questions under the personal brand framework to help understand personal branding:

WHO? Who are you? Not your title. Not your position. Not the company printed on your business card. But what do you represent? Integrity? Financial discipline? Building people? Mentorship? Excellence?

WHY? What drives you? Your values, purpose and beliefs. What is important to you?

WHAT? What unique value do you create? Not your skills, but your experience, perspective, background, curiosity and values.

HOW? How do people experience you? Are you reliable? Creative? Calm under pressure? Strategic? Generous with your time? A good listener? This becomes your brand experience.

WHERE? Where should people encounter you? LinkedIn? Speaking engagements? Writing? Networking? Teaching? Mentoring? Visibility follows clarity.

Building a personal brand involves an interesting challenge: the need to be relevant enough to fit in, yet distinctive enough to stand out, while still remaining authentic. Personal brands are ultimately built on trust, and pretending to be someone you are not is exhausting. If the image projected is disconnected from who you really are, the inconsistency will show.

How, then, is trust built? Through consistent behavior: keeping promises, being reliable, helping others, solving problems and showing up. In the reputation equation, he pointed out, visibility gets attention, credibility earns trust, and consistency keeps it.

The chief executive officer is a brand's touchpoint, he emphasized. People increasingly want to know who is behind the company. What does the CEO believe in? How does the company treat its employees? Does leadership communicate honestly? The behavior of a company's leaders becomes part of the company's story, and leaders themselves have become part of the brand narrative. That link is borne out in global trust research: successive editions of the Edelman Trust Barometer point to leadership credibility as a key driver of trust in companies. He gave examples of how closely a corporate brand can become connected with the personality, behavior and public presence of its leader.

During the session, participants were asked to break into pairs and describe the person beside them. The author's seatmate was Vogue Concepts CEO Louie Camara Scott, whom she saw as elegant, gentle and kind. Ms. Scott was pleasantly surprised by the description "gentle" — a reminder that how we see ourselves and how others see us may not always match. Mr. Dietzel said: "Customer perception is reality."

Surprisingly, some of the women were actually more self-critical, and so they work even harder and exert more effort. No wonder they are CEOs and women achievers.

The FCC women have already built their individual brands, and the FCC creates a platform where that collective credibility becomes an asset for the next generation of Filipina leaders. That platform role carries added weight as boardroom diversity becomes a recurring item on corporate-governance agendas in the Philippines and the wider region.

After a job title changes or a business card is replaced, your name remains. When people hear your name, will they remember not just your achievements but who you really are? The most important brand is your name — the brand called YOU.

The views expressed herein are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of her office as well as FINEX (Financial Executives Institute of the Philippines).

Flor G. Tarriela was former chairman of the Philippine National Bank and the first Filipina vice-president of Citibank, former undersecretary of Finance, and currently serves as director and board adviser to publicly listed companies. She is a gardener and environmentalist.