A few years ago I read a USA Today profile of Campbell Soup Company CEO Douglas Conant and was struck by a number of things. The first thing that caught my attention is how he defined his mission in taking the helm in 2001 as being, “to take a bad company and lift its performance to extraordinary by 2011.”

Conant accomplished his mission. Under his leadership, Campbell reversed a precipitous decline in market value and employee engagement, improving its financial profile, enhancing its diversity and inclusion practices, and raising its corporate social responsibility profile.

I have followed Conant's insightful and authentic blogs and articles on leadership over the years, and recently read his new book, TouchPoints: Creating Powerful Leadership Connections in the Smallest of Moments, coauthored with management consultant Mette Norgaard. The book is terrific because it tackles leadership from uniquely personal angle.

Here, Conant answers a few questions about a little idea that makes a big difference.

Q: What is a TouchPoint?

A: A TouchPoint is a reframing of an ordinary moment of interaction with someone. We have hundreds of them everyday. Mostly we think of them as interruptions or distractions. But what if you could step back and look at all of those interactions with a fresh perspective? What if, instead of seeing them as interfering with your work, you were to look at them as latent leadership moments? What if these moments were the answer to leadership in today’s busy world?

For me, that's precisely what they are. Each of the many interactions you have during your day is an opportunity to establish high performance expectations, to infuse greater clarity and energy, and to influence the course of events.

Q: So what does a TouchPoint look like in practice?

A: Each day is an elaborate sequence of TouchPoints: interactions with one other person, a couple of people, or a group that can last a couple of minutes, a couple of hours, or a couple of days. Those TouchPoints can be planned or spontaneous, casual or carefully choreographed. They take place in hallways, on factory floors, in conference rooms, on the phone, and via e-mail or instant messaging. Some deal with straightforward, relatively minor issues, while others involve complex challenges with wide-ranging effects.

Leaders often see these interactions as getting in the way of their real work: the important work of strategizing, planning and prioritizing. But I believe these touch points are the real work! They are the little moments that bring your strategies and priorities to life, the interactions that translate your ideas into new and better behaviors.

Q: What do you need to do in order do all that?

A: You need to be a great listener. Listening is one of the most amazingly efficient things you can do as a leader. But listening can be very hard to do. One reason is that most leaders have a bias for action, and if they are listening it doesn't feel like they are doing anything. But listening is critical if you are to get a good understanding of the issue. Without that understanding, you can easily waste everyone’s time by solving the wrong problem or by merely addressing a symptom, not the underlying disease.

Q: Okay, but don't you have to do something with what you've heard?

A: Sure. Listening is the start. Then you have to frame the issue and advance the agenda. It begins with asking, “How can I help?” Listening intently helps you to figure out what is really going on and what others need from you; it is a way to tangibly demonstrate that you care. Framing the issue ensures that everyone in the TouchPoint has the same understanding of the issue. Advancing the agenda means deciding what next steps to take and who will take them. After the TouchPoint is over, following up with a question such as, “How did it go?” or “Is there anything else you need from me?” is a reminder that you care; it also lets you know how things worked out and whether you were genuinely helpful.

And, that’s it. You master the touch by listening intently, framing the issue and advancing the agenda. So as you engage in TouchPoint after TouchPoint, all you need to remember is “listen-frame-advance,” “listen-frame-advance.” And you do it dozens of times each day, day after day.

Q: You advocate using your heart when making decisions. That seems to run counter to the idea that all leadership decisions should be logical ones. Can you clarify?

A: Some leaders say, “It’s not personal, it’s just business.” Don’t buy it! What these leaders mean is that they believe that to show strength you need to be tough-minded and tough-hearted. But the opposite is the case. What takes real courage is to make your work intensely personal; to care about your work and about the people you work with. We believe that when you use your heart, you will make better judgments concerning the issue; you’ll make stronger connections with the other people; and you will develop your personal authority as a leader.

Some of the decisions you need to make in a TouchPoint are clear-cut. You simply get the best data, analyze it and make the call. Yet in most cases you need to consider more than the numbers. There are even times when the numbers reveal one course of action as the smart thing to do, yet you know it is not the right thing to do. In such cases, you need to trust your intuition and connect to your principles. You need to use both your head and your heart to make a wise decision.