I understand preparing for coding rounds, but I fail to understand preparing for behavioral round and leadership rounds.
Do you have to fake your behaviour or leadership principles? The ones that you believe in ?
Nuance and wisdom are gained through experience. When I was a tech lead, I considered all my colleagues as friends, deeply. And then came the day where I had to rate their performance and objectively give feedback. This is really hard when you viewed and conversed with them as buddies all along the year.
That does not mean you shouldn't cultivate friendships, but I learnt that your primary duty as a leader is to align incentives and give objective feedback for the growth of your reportee as well as organization. And then comes friendship.
The nuance in friendship can only be learnt via experience, not in a textbook.
Coming back to the question on preparing for leadership and behavioral rounds, I side with being "original" and not putting a mask on.
My answers to "what is the responsibility of a manager ?" is vastly different today than what I would have answered 3yrs ago. But both of those answers would be original, ruthlessly.
Might sound like I am praising here myself for being ruthlessly original, but then if you examine, it's hard to find people who are "ruthlessly original".
The courage to stand for what one believes in vs whatever is the norm.