Without a Process

It is a falsity. The story goes that for every goal there is a Process that can be followed to accomplish it. Once you learn it you are good to go and be a success. There are various games and takes on this old lie.

At a meta-level:

• Learn the system.
• Get into the skin of it.
• Wear it out.
• Win the game
• Game the system

At a deeper level there is an insight - there maybe goals that have no process ("...Yet!" the proceduralists may baulk))

Is there a manual for leadership (social EQ with executive skills) and problem solving skills that one can learn and practice to get good at following a process that would lead one out? Could that be perfected?

The simple answer here is that there is no process for that goal.

No way out

Two reasons explain why that is so. First, problems that require diffuse thinking and insight are not the type that can be perfected. They are mutually exclusive types of problems. One can get good at it but the goal for these is not perfection. When methodless action is required, the proceduralists would fail. Not just that, the world has shown, so far, that method monkeys are actually trying to through every stick and stone in the Work.

The Second Reason

There are problems that require new processes and there may be people who can define novel processes and find fluidly intelligent solutions. So you never know which problems are solvable and which ones are not before you have tried and failed a number of times or solved it. While the route to a potential solution exists prior to the solution there is no knowledge of how to get there.
There is also no godprocess that would solve every problem of any conceivable type.

Process vs Mindset

Beyond compliance to the process and carrying out the know-how in practice there must be something that makes revolutions in thinking, and emoting and running the world at any scale.
The answer is a different mindset.

“The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.”

― Albert Einstein

The problems of today cannot be solved with the mindset of today.

The mindset that applies metacognition makes it possible to meta learn.
To be open to solving problems with the thought frameworks that do not exist as of yet. To be open to assuming other thinking models. These are the requirements for deprogramming from the thought model of the proceduralist.

Open the mind.
Open the bridge or take a leap between Process and the Mindset.

Where we go from here is up to you.