If you don't already know, Dawnshard is an interlude novella that takes place between book 3 and 4 in the series. It expands on some world history that was only touched on and mostly adds a lot of context for things for the next books. My partner read the first interlude novella, Edgedancer, without reading any of the other books and didn't have any issues. If you've read the entirety of The Way of Kings you'll probably have enough environmental and worldbuilding context to kind of figure out what's going on at least.
Possibly very minor spoilers
The story centers around a character who was already introduced to you in the interlude chapters of TWoK, Rysn. Rysn lost the use of her legs during an accident and was given a pet Larkin, which is a small dragon/lizard creature that feeds off Stormlight, as a condolence.
Some of the overarching political things might go over your head, but really nothing is important enough that you won't understand the book itself. The big gist of it all is that a big war between good and evil just started at the end of the previous book, but none of it is very important to this book except as a backdrop.
Aside from that there are a few characters that have the same powers as Kaladin came into in TWoK. They only have powers because they are his subordinates.