Elevate Your Team

Why do some companies sustain rapid growth without burning through their people, while others crumble under the pressure? In Elevate Your Team, Robert Glazer argues that the true differentiator between thriving organizations and those that plateau lies in how they develop people, not just systems. His core contention: if you want to grow your business, you must first grow your people’s capacity—their ability to adapt, learn, and thrive in tandem with your company’s evolution.

Glazer, founder of Acceleration Partners (AP), opens the book with a paradox he experienced firsthand. Despite AP’s skyrocketing success—4,000 percent growth over a decade, dozens of awards, and a strong culture—employees were increasingly struggling to keep up. Some of his best early hires couldn’t grow fast enough to meet the demands of a rapidly expanding business. He needed a new playbook for developing people that could scale sustainably. The answer, he realized, was rooted in a principle drawn from his earlier bestseller Elevate: capacity building.

The Core Premise: Capacity as the Engine of Growth

Glazer defines capacity building as the process through which individuals and organizations expand their abilities to perform at a higher level in pursuit of potential. At the organizational level, capacity building becomes a framework that aligns employee development with company growth. Glazer discovered that sustainable success depends not only on hiring great people but also on helping them keep pace with the company by fostering growth across four integrated domains: spiritual, intellectual, physical, and emotional capacity.

Each capacity represents a crucial dimension of human performance:

• Spiritual Capacity – Understanding who you are, what you value, and what you stand for.
• Intellectual Capacity – Building the habits and discipline that enable continuous learning and execution.
• Physical Capacity – Managing energy, health, and recovery to operate sustainably.
• Emotional Capacity – Developing resilience, perspective, and relationships that help you navigate challenges.

The Challenge of Organizational Growth Curves

As AP grew, Glazer noticed a recurring pattern: when the company’s growth outpaced an employee’s capacity to grow, strain emerged. Some team members would plateau—still trying, still improving, but at a slower rate than the company needed. Others thrived, continuously learning and rising into more senior roles. To visualize this, he sketched what he called the capacity-building curve: a chart comparing company growth to employee performance over time.

Employees, he found, fall into four categories:

• Unicorns – Rare individuals who outgrow the company’s pace, setting new benchmarks.
• A-Players – Consistent high-performers who grow at the same rate as the company and often become future leaders.
• Capacity-Building Zone (CBZ) Employees – Most people, improving each year but not as fast as the organization needs.
• Underperformers – Those who cannot or will not increase their capacity meaningfully over time.

This framework crystalized a key organizational truth: sustainable growth requires systematically developing the capacity of every employee to meet new challenges. Without that alignment, companies face frequent turnover, stalled leadership pipelines, and cultural decay. The only way to scale sustainably is to build a culture that scales its people.

Why Capacity Building Matters in Today’s Workplaces

In an era of constant disruption—whether from technology, globalization, or changing workforce expectations—Glazer argues that companies can no longer treat professional development as a nice-to-have. Today’s top performers crave continuous learning and purpose. They want to bring their whole selves to work, which means their personal growth is inseparable from professional progress. When leaders invest in helping employees grow across all four capacities, the benefits compound: greater engagement, innovation, retention, and long-term loyalty.

Glazer points out that capacity building isn’t just about producing better managers or more efficient teams; it’s about human fulfillment. A person who is self-aware, disciplined, healthy, and emotionally grounded is not only a stronger professional but also a better parent, partner, and community member. The effects of capacity building ripple far beyond the workplace.

From Leadership Theory to Practical Framework

Unlike many management books filled with academic theory, Elevate Your Team was forged in real-world experimentation. Glazer grounds his ideas in the transformation of Acceleration Partners—a remote-first, performance-driven company that defied the churn-and-burn culture common in its industry. By prioritizing employee capacity building, AP achieved sustained growth, exceptionally low turnover, and an 80% internal promotion rate.

The book, structured around the four capacities, details how leaders can cultivate each one in their teams through exercises, coaching frameworks, and cultural practices. But Glazer also reminds you that capacity building must begin with self-leadership. If you want a thriving, adaptable team, you must be an example of spiritual integrity, intellectual discipline, physical balance, and emotional strength. Leadership, he insists, is less about control and more about modeling growth.

A Blueprint for Elevating Both Companies and People

By the end of Elevate Your Team, the reader understands that capacity building isn’t an initiative—it’s a philosophy. It reframes how leaders view their role: not as talent managers but as capacity builders who help people achieve their potential at work and in life. The payoff is profound. When employees grow in harmony with the organization, businesses become more resilient, innovative, and human-centered.

Glazer’s journey—from shower-door epiphany to a proven framework for leadership development—demonstrates that the most scalable strategy for business success is helping people grow faster than your company. In his words, the ultimate goal is to “build a business that builds people.”

At the heart of Glazer’s approach are four interconnected capacities—spiritual, intellectual, physical, and emotional. These form a holistic model for personal and professional growth. Like the legs of a table, if one is weak, the entire system wobbles. High-performing teams and leaders maintain balance across all four.

Spiritual Capacity: Authentic Leadership Starts Within

Spiritual capacity isn’t about religion—it’s about clarity of purpose, values, and self-awareness. Glazer recounts an exercise he used at Acceleration Partners to help managers identify their personal core values through reflection questions like “What qualities in others do you struggle with most?” or “What would you want said in your eulogy?” The outcome is often transformative. For one leader named Andrew, realizing that self-awareness was his deepest personal value allowed him to reframe frustrations at work and communicate more honestly with his team.

Glazer urges every leader to define their non-negotiable core values and lead authentically from them. Values act as an internal compass when faced with difficult decisions. They prevent burnout, strengthen integrity, and help leaders attract people whose values align (similar to Simon Sinek’s concept of starting with “Why”).

Intellectual Capacity: Building the Discipline to Learn

Intellectual capacity is about how you learn, plan, and execute with consistency. Employees with high intellectual capacity are voracious learners who embrace challenges and crave feedback. Glazer links this to Daniel Pink’s “drive for mastery,” one of the key motivators beyond money. He uses the S-curve of learning to show how growth accelerates after early struggles, peaks at mastery, and then levels off—at which point ambitious people need a new S-curve to climb again.

Organizations can nurture intellectual capacity through leadership training, book clubs, educational reimbursements, and open financial education that helps employees understand how their roles affect company success. Discipline also matters: daily routines, time blocking, and structured goals (think SMART goals or OKRs) are practical ways to strengthen intellectual muscle. These habits free attention and create a rhythm for growth.

Physical Capacity: Sustaining High Performance

In a culture that glorifies nonstop hustle, Glazer brings a contrarian—yet increasingly validated—view: long-term performance demands rest and health. He uses the example of Marissa Mayer, the former Yahoo CEO known for her “130-hour workweeks,” to reveal the myth of overwork. Research shows sleep deprivation mirrors drunkenness in its cognitive impact. Leaders should model balance by taking real vacations, setting clear boundaries, and limiting after-hours emails (using delayed send is one of Glazer’s favorite hacks).

He advocates managing outcomes, not hours. Using examples from sales metrics to outcome-based performance tracking, Glazer reimagines productivity through the Pareto principle: 20% of activities produce 80% of results. When employees focus on outcomes rather than face time, they are healthier, sharper, and more engaged. Encouraging wellness programs, flexible working hours, and even “wellness challenges” reinforces that self-care isn’t selfish—it’s strategic.

Emotional Capacity: Trust, Vulnerability, and Control

Emotional capacity governs how individuals respond under pressure and relate to others. For Glazer, emotional mastery begins with vulnerability and psychological safety. He recounts Acceleration Partners’ “One Last Talk” event, where employees gave heartfelt, personal speeches to colleagues. This authenticity forged unprecedented trust across the organization.

Building emotional capacity requires sharing more openly (through practices like weekly personal check-ins), mastering productive conflict (as Adam Grant explores in Think Again), and focusing energy on what can be controlled rather than external drama. Leaders who model openness—admitting mistakes, asking for feedback, and discussing failures—create an environment where growth feels safe.

Together, these four capacities unlock a virtuous cycle: when people clarify their purpose (spiritual), sharpen their habits (intellectual), protect their energy (physical), and strengthen their mindset (emotional), they accelerate both personal and organizational performance. It’s the integrated leadership model modern workplaces have been missing.

Glazer begins team transformation by starting at the individual level. Spiritual capacity—clarity about purpose, values, and why one works—is the foundation for all others. Without it, intellectual discipline and emotional intelligence rest on shaky ground.

Finding Your Core Values

After attending a leadership retreat, Glazer went through months of reflection to articulate his top five core values, including Find a Better Way and Share It and Respectful Authenticity. This inner work changed how he led, delegated, and made decisions. Employees at Acceleration Partners went through similar workshops, using questions such as “When have you been most engaged at work?” or “What behaviors in others irritate you most?” to surface the values underpinning their motivation.

When leaders know and share their personal values, trust builds faster. Teams can adapt their communication around what matters most. And for employees, discovering a misalignment between their values and their work might lead to hard decisions—but also to growth and integrity. Glazer encourages leaders not to fear these realizations; value discoveries that lead to career changes are better than lingering dissatisfaction.

Strengths, Whys, and Assessment Tools

To help people know themselves even better, Glazer integrates tools like CliftonStrengths, DiSC, and Gary Sanchez’s Why Archetype assessment. Each provides vocabulary for discussing tendencies and motivations—essential for communication and collaboration. Glazer’s own why is “to find a better way,” which explains his constant drive for innovation and why he sometimes frustrates team members by never settling. Sharing that insight allowed his colleagues to manage up more effectively (“What would you like me to pause if we add this new project?”).

Assessments, used responsibly, promote empathy across teams. They help people appreciate differences rather than label each other. However, Glazer cautions against using them in hiring; the goal is awareness, not exclusion.

Leading as Your Authentic Self

Once a leader understands their values, they must communicate them. Glazer tells the story of “Andrew,” who discovered that self-awareness was both his trauma and his core value. After sharing that discovery with his team and explaining why certain behaviors (like interrupting or over-talking) triggered frustration, Andrew’s team adapted quickly and trust deepened. Vulnerability, Glazer shows, is not weakness—it’s clarity in action.

Cultivating spiritual capacity means helping your people answer three questions: Who am I? What do I value most? How can I align my work with these truths? When values and actions align, authenticity fuels performance.

Intellectual capacity—the drive and discipline to learn—is not just about IQ. It’s a culture that rewards curiosity, feedback, and growth. Glazer found that when employees stop learning, they start leaving. His solution: build a company that teaches, trains, and stretches its people constantly.

The S-Curve of Growth

Borrowing from strategist Whitney Johnson, Glazer explains the S-curve: early struggle at the bottom, rapid growth in the middle, and stagnation at the top. Employees who reach mastery often get bored; the solution is to push them to a new curve—a new challenge, project, or skill. Great companies intentionally move employees to new curves before complacency sets in.

Training for the Future, Not Just the Job

Most workplaces train people only for current tasks. Glazer emphasizes proactive preparation for roles employees will fill 6–12 months later. At AP, managers-in-waiting attended advanced leadership workshops before their promotion. These sessions included role-playing crucial conversations, learning delegation, and giving/receiving feedback—skills that reduce turnover-driven chaos when new leaders step up.

Building Habits and Routines

Intellectual capacity also grows through systems. Glazer champions practices like time blocking, morning routines (inspired by Hal Elrod’s The Miracle Morning), and “GSD time” (Get Stuff Done) for deep work. These rituals train focus and discipline. When practiced collectively, they create organizational momentum—the same way athletes condition muscles through routine drills.

A Culture of Feedback

Learning depends on feedback. AP trained managers to hold courageous conversations using an SBO framework (Situation, Behavior, Outcome). This method avoids personal attacks and focuses on specific actions and improvement plans. Over time, this made feedback normal, not scary—a cornerstone of what Kim Scott calls “radical candor.”

Continuous learning isn’t an HR program; it’s a shared mindset. As Glazer shows, when curiosity is baked into company DNA, learning becomes a source of energy, not obligation.

Physical capacity underpins sustainable success. When leaders equate long hours with performance, burnout is inevitable. Glazer dismantles this myth with data, empathy, and personal examples, showing that capacity is a function of energy, not time.

Working Smarter, Not Longer

The cautionary tale of Marissa Mayer’s 130-hour workweeks exemplifies a cultural blind spot: excessive work masquerading as dedication. Glazer sees such habits as destructive. Instead, he advocates outcome-based work—measuring success by results, not hours. Quoting the Pareto principle, he reminds readers that focusing on the 20% of efforts that deliver 80% of outcomes creates more success and more capacity.

Modeling Healthy Boundaries

Leaders set the norm for their teams. Glazer recommends avoiding late-night email sends, openly scheduling vacation time, and encouraging physical separation between work and home for remote teams. AP even offered a “vacation bonus,” reimbursing employees who took real, unplugged time off, reinforcing that rest replenishes performance.

Encouraging Wellness as Culture

Glazer’s company created “Wellness Challenges” where employees earned team points for meditation, walking, or workouts—a playful yet powerful way to normalize self-care. These small acts of physical renewal translated into sharper focus and collaboration. Built right, such culture changes convert wellness from a perk into a performance advantage.

High physical capacity isn’t fitness for its own sake—it’s resilience. By redefining productivity through energy management and boundaries, Glazer shows you can sustain excellence without exhaustion.

Emotional capacity—how we handle adversity, feedback, and relationships—is what turns a group of talented individuals into a cohesive team. Glazer’s stories illustrate how vulnerability, accountability, and ownership create cultures of deep psychological safety.

Vulnerability as Strength

The “One Last Talk” initiative transformed Acceleration Partners by inviting employees to share raw, personal stories before the entire company. Far from being uncomfortable, it deepened trust and shattered superficial barriers. When leaders go first in revealing humanity, others follow, creating what Brené Brown calls “strong back, soft front” leadership.

Communication and Productive Conflict

Emotional capacity also means communicating differences skillfully. Through frameworks like the Johari Window, Glazer encourages expanding mutual understanding by sharing more openly and soliciting honest feedback. He distinguishes between task conflict (healthy debate over ideas) and relationship conflict (personal animosity) using insights from Adam Grant—helping teams argue better without fracturing trust.

Ownership and Focus

Perhaps the most powerful aspect of emotional capacity is ownership. Glazer contrasts resilient companies that focus on controllables with toxic ones that blame externals. His mantra, borrowed from Warren Rustand, sums it up: “If you control it, don’t worry. If you don’t control it, don’t worry.” The greatest emotional energy savings come from surrendering what’s outside your influence.

Emotional capacity transforms teams into cohesive partners. It turns anxiety into compassion and mistakes into learning fuel. When leaders create safety for truth-telling, accountability ceases to feel like punishment—it becomes a path to pride and performance.

Building a capacity-driven company starts with who you hire and how you promote. Glazer reframes recruitment as a search for aptitude over experience. He learned that in fast-scaling businesses, hiring for what someone can become is often wiser than hiring solely for what they’ve done.

Recruiting High-Capacity Talent

Imagine two candidates with similar results but very different trajectories: one took seven years to generate $1 million in sales; the other, two. The second person, with faster growth, is your high-capacity hire. Glazer looks for signs of steep learning curves—rapid internal promotions, versatility across functions, and a hunger to improve. These are “growth stocks,” not “bonds.”

He also prizes grit and curiosity. High-capacity hires exhibit sustained effort in personal pursuits—whether athletics, music, or entrepreneurship—proving their ability to push boundaries.

Promoting Wisely

Not everyone grows at the same pace. Glazer cautions leaders against promoting loyal employees too soon out of sentiment. His friend who made a trusted controller CFO prematurely lost $1 million due to lack of readiness—a painful but avoidable lesson. Effective leaders must balance optimism with objectivity: coach people up, but don’t ignore reality.

Alternative Career Paths

Glazer argues that not all advancement means management. Some of the best contributors prefer to excel individually, and leadership should honor that. By introducing “senior individual contributor” tracks and aligning pay with impact, AP retained top creative, technical, and client-service talent who might otherwise have left. A healthy organization, he writes, needs both great leaders and great doers—and both deserve respect.

The capacity mindset changes performance evaluation entirely: instead of asking “Who has the most experience?” leaders ask “Who is learning fastest?” Over time, this builds a culture obsessed not with credentials but with growth velocity.

The culmination of Glazer’s system is succession—proving that your leadership model works when you step aside. In the book’s closing chapters, he recounts handing the CEO role of Acceleration Partners to longtime colleague Matt Wool after years of deliberate preparation. It wasn’t an ending—it was the ultimate act of capacity building.

From Catch-and-Release to Pure Meritocracy

Glazer categorizes company cultures into three types. Star Stiflers cling to hierarchy and lose talent. Catch-and-Release firms (like Netflix under Patty McCord) proudly grow employees even if they move on. The rarest, Pure Meritocracies, not only develop people but also continuously elevate them internally—regardless of ego or tenure. That’s where he wanted AP to be. When Wool, a proven leader who had grown alongside the company for years, surpassed Glazer’s own strengths in certain areas, Glazer made the hard but healthy decision to promote him.

Letting Go as Leadership

True leadership, Glazer concludes, means creating successors who eclipse you. By preparing Wool and 80% of AP’s leadership team internally, he built a living system of elevation. His mantra echoes timeless business wisdom—“there is no success without succession.” Leaders who hoard control stifle progress; those who empower others create lasting legacies.

His final challenge: every leader must decide whether to build a legacy of fear or growth. Do you protect your position—or cultivate others who can take your place? The latter, Glazer assures, is how organizations—and people—truly elevate.