That's what I have been thinking about posting about. I don't have all the answers to it, but have struggled with getting the idea across to my crews for decades now.
It's partly - maybe mainly caricature, which is a concept that most cartoonists say they believe in - even Walt Disney, but not many practice.
My experience is that most cartoonists underture what they are given to work on, rather than caricature it.
To be able to exaggerate something means you are basing your drawing on something that already exists. You are staring at it - either something in life like a human, dog, or tree....or
a storyboard drawing that you have to translate into a layout pose, or an animation drawing.
To exaggerate well and with focus, you have to understand contrasts, which takes an ability to analyze what you are looking at and then say what you see, then push it farther.
It also takes the ability to control relative exaggeration - not just to make every part of your drawing extreme or crazy.
I'll find some more illustrations later to help with the concept.