Developing "Right Listening" is very important with our speech. Mindfulness of our intentions can't be developed, if we're talking all the time without listening. Practical tips for mindfulness? Mindfulness of the body is very helpful. In interviews I try to have a certain amount of awareness of the body while I'm listening.
Patience Parami helps. How do we develop Patience? Oftentimes by reflecting on the disadvantages of not being patient in the past helps us be more patient with our speech and try to actually listen more.
"Can you talk about the line between telling stories and gossip?" Yes, oftentimes you'll probably see when we share stories in our talks or in interviews, we will keep the identity of who it is private unless it's necessary for us to do otherwise. This helps to stop gossiping with an intent to try to get someone to believe certain things about another person. Unless the story happens to be true, then there may be another purpose for sharing that particular story.
As far as gossip, we have to understand whether we know this information for ourselves and for what purpose we are sharing the story. If we don't know the facts of the story for ourselves, but if we have a good intention for sharing it, then we'll have to add to our speech "I was told", or "this was said", so that we don't imply that we know. If you see that your telling a story in order to try to influence someone about a particular person in a negative way you can ask yourself some questions: For what reason am I doing this? Is it beneficial? Is it not? Now or in future? Because if we don't know whether the story is true or not we may be spreading falsehood and this is not compassionate to ourselves or others, and we make unbeneficial Kamma from this. So, it's quite important to be careful about the stories we know so that we can make sure we are sharing the truth.
We can also reflect about the disadvantages of prejudice. Prejudice is making a judgment about someone without getting the full story. If this has ever happened to you, you can reflect on how painful it is to have a person believe something about you that isn't true without actually any interest in finding out your side of the story. It's very painful. So, by remembering these times within yourself, it helps you to be much more careful. Understanding that other beings are similar to you. They don't like to be judged without being able to share the full story about something. When I'm told a story about a particular person, I try to get the other side of the story from a different perspective because often stories are exaggerated, as there is a tendency in some people, to make a better story, to exaggerate. Learning how to ask questions before we make a judgment is compassionate.