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It's a new year. We have a new City Council and a new city manager but they face the same old problems: Expenses are up, revenues are down and everyone seems to have his or her hand out.

With four new members, including a new mayor, the organizational culture of this important group of our employees has definitely changed. I use the words "group" and "employees" intentionally because at this stage in their evolution, they are a group, not a team, and although we may need to remind them from time to time, they really do work for us.

We are not getting the most out of our employees. At a mid-December retreat the council and top city staff members met to work out how to become a more effective team. The effort failed because council members were unable to get beyond their personal agendas and unwilling to pay the price in terms of openness and vulnerability that is necessary for authentic communication. Instead, they disparaged the effort as unnecessarily "fuzzy-wuzzy" and retreated into task.

Working through underlying interpersonal and process issues is a necessary prerequisite to effective team performance. "Fuzzy-wuzzy" process issues are the currency of the realm when it comes to developing effective teams, and the council derailed its efforts by prejudicial labeling and a lack of courage to deal with the real issues. As their employers, we can't let them get away with it. The issues we face are too important. We need the synergy of a team, not the fragmentation of a group. Let's look at our council in the light the developmental stages formulated by psychologist Bruce Tuckman: forming, storming, norming and performing.

Forming

Groups come together for a purpose. In business organizations that purpose is usually clear -- to accomplish a common goal. Our council members "form" by getting elected but the reasons they choose to endure the stress of running are not so clear or common. Why do they do it? It is an individually weighted combination of political orientation, status, professional advocacy, desire for public service and personal fulfillment. This fragmented motivation becomes apparent in the next stage, storming.

Storming

This involves conflict over power, control, status and influence. It can be subtle or it can be direct and open. All groups go through it, and a surprising number never progress beyond it. When our council focuses on who sits where, whether or not to support the mayor's decisions on board appointments or the ground rules for texting during meetings, what's really going on is a form of storming over power and control. All members of new groups ponder and often test behavioral limits on deeply personal questions such as "How do I fit?" "Who listens to me?" "How much influence do I have?" and "What role should I take?" Our new council is not immune.

The way to avoid getting stuck on storming is to engage in the type of team-building activities pejoratively labeled as "fuzzy-wuzzy." Surfacing group process issues and breaking the artificial rational/empirical facade by dealing with feelings and emotions is the key to authentic group development and frees the group to move beyond the barrier of unending storming. It can be done by the group itself, but in a diversely motivated group like our council, is better done by an outside facilitator.

Norming

Group norms are the often unspoken, but clear and powerful, ground rules in regard to how the group operates. In groups that move beyond the storming phase, individual roles and influence patterns are clarified. Groups become teams when they achieve synergy. Synergy basically means that the whole is better than the sum of the parts -- that teamwork produces a better product than fragmented individual efforts.

Synergy requires group norms that respect individual perspectives but hold the team accountable for a collective result. Establishing group norms that facilitate this balance will not be easy for our new council. Many, including our new mayor, have a background as individual contributors or have worked in small, relatively one-dimensional businesses. They would do well to learn from Rashad Young, the new city manager, who has firsthand experience working in a large, multidimensional organizational culture.

Performing

This is the bottom line. Regardless of their individual motivation for running for office, the council members are now our employees and, in today's environment, we need them to be the best they can be. This means moving through the storming phase and establishing inclusive and productive norms that serve our entire community, not just council members' individual interests and political orientations.

Our new council employees are still malleable. Before they become ossified in a perpetual storming mode, we can help them understand that it is necessary to have the courage to engage in "fuzzy-wuzzy" activities. We can demand excellent performance. We can communicate with them individually. We can send them a copy of this column.

Thanks to the influence of the Center for Creative Leadership, Greensboro is blessed with many highly competent group facilitators. Most of the ones I know would be willing to work with the council at a nominal charge or even as a civic contribution at no charge. They just need to be asked.

David Noer (dnoer@elon.edu) writes a monthly column for the News & Record on leadership, organizational behavior and community issues.