How to really benefit from Accolades?

I have read a few times already on this subreddit how accolades are really good at improving your troops and helps turning your troops into super soldiers.

In my experience playing with accolades I always have these problems:

  1. I don't know how to get the power I want. I mean, I don't know which combination of traits allows me to have the kind of accolade I want, so most of the time I just choose a random one that doesn't seems useful (which ones are the really useful ones?)
  2. I find it really hard to get glory, most of the time my accolades are at level 1, then someone inherits the title and lose most of the exp. Never had a lv3+ accolade.
  3. I find it really hard to find an adequate substitute for my accolades, sometimes I can't find one, or the one I find is a really bad soldier with low martial and no useful traits. so I end up with a bad accolade that has lost most of his glory, or with a new accolade.

Since these things have been happening consistently in all of my playthroughs, I always though accolades were bad, and I always end up with a bunch of accolades doing absolutely nothing.

What am I doing wrong? How should I approach this system?