Leadership Coach Karen Malloy Launches The Turnaround Code

Malloy’s Six-Month Program Helps Leaders of Leaders Turn
High-Visibility Assignments Into Preparation for Bigger Roles

DES MOINES, IA, UNITED STATES, November 5, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Karen Malloy, certified leadership coach and HR strategist,, is launching The Turnaround Code, a six-month leadership coaching program through her company, Karom. Designed for leaders of leaders managing difficult, high-visibility assignments, the program combines individual coaching, stakeholder feedback and a practical plan for addressing team and organizational challenges.

The launch comes amid declining manager engagement. Gallup’s 2026 State of the Global Workplace report found that global manager engagement fell from 27% in 2024 to 22% in 2025. Malloy’s program focuses on the practical demands leaders face when taking responsibility for struggling teams, organizational transitions and complex assignments.

“I’ve sat in the meetings where promotions get decided, and the question is almost never whether someone worked hard,” Malloy says. “It’s whether they’ve moved the business forward and brought people with them. Nothing shows that faster than a difficult assignment.”

Malloy brings more than 20 years of HR leadership experience, built largely at Mercy Medical Center-Des Moines (now MercyOne) and Kum & Go. At Mercy, part of Catholic Health Initiatives, she partnered with nursing leaders on engagement initiatives; together, they oversaw roughly 700 clinical employees. At Kum & Go, she worked with an operations leader and 10 directors to raise engagement across a multistate retail region. She also led enterprise-wide culture survey work for several years across its then-parent company, Krause Group, and guided HR through a major acquisition and multiyear integration.

During her corporate career, Malloy regularly worked with leaders facing difficult team dynamics, organizational change and performance challenges. Those experiences led her to establish Karom and develop a coaching approach for leaders taking on demanding assignments.

The Turnaround Code helps leaders identify the issues beneath a difficult assignment, stabilize their teams and build trust with stakeholders. Coaching addresses practical challenges such as delegation, difficult conversations and communicating results to senior executives—connecting the work of leading a team with how organizations evaluate readiness for greater responsibility.

The six-month engagement combines 12 one-on-one coaching sessions—beginning with a 90-minute kickoff—with the Undercurrent Assessment, which pairs the leader’s own reflection with confidential feedback from their team and key stakeholders. Malloy helps participants translate those findings into a one-page Turnaround Plan that guides the rest of the program. An optional conversation with the participant’s manager helps establish shared expectations at the outset.

Participants also receive a toolkit of reflection guides and AI prompts that help them design a meeting cadence, one-on-one structure and team charter fitted to their team. A follow-up pulse survey in the fifth month measures what has changed, giving leaders concrete results to share with their organization.

The Turnaround Code is intended for mid-level leaders, senior managers, directors, assistant vice presidents and vice presidents responsible for complex assignments with significant organizational visibility.

Malloy says many leaders misread what a tough assignment signals. “Organizations don’t hand their hardest problems to people they’ve given up on. If you’ve been given the mess, someone believes you can fix it.”

Malloy is available for interviews on topics including:

– What HR leaders actually discuss in year-end promotion and calibration meetings
– The first 90 days of leading an inherited team
– Why hard workers get passed over for promotion

Additional information is available at www.leadwithkarom.com.

About Karen Malloy

Karen Malloy is an ICF-certified (ACC) leadership coach, a Certified High Performance Coach (CHPC) through the High Performance Institute, a PHR-certified HR leader and the founder of Karom. Over more than 20 years in HR leadership at organizations including Catholic Health Initiatives and Kum & Go, she has partnered with executives and their leadership teams on employee engagement and organizational culture initiatives. She created The Turnaround Code to help leaders of leaders turn difficult, high-visibility assignments into proof they’re ready for greater responsibility.

Heather Burgett
The Burgett Group, Inc.
+1 310-633-4801